Yvonne Ba­boolal

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has brand­ed as "bad jour­nal­ism" and "a lie" al­le­ga­tions in yes­ter­day's Ex­press news­pa­per that he said solid­ers are lazy and un­der-utilised.The AG spoke at length on the is­sue at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, say­ing the mis­in­for­ma­tion caused pain and an­guish and led to an in­ter­view with re­tired ma­jor gen­er­al Ralph Brown on an in­cor­rect premise. Brown said he could not be­lieve such a stu­pid state­ment was made, the AG said.

Ram­lo­gan, read­ing from Par­lia­ment's Hansard re­port, said at no time dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (De­fence and Po­lice Com­pli­ants) Bill 2013 in the Sen­ate last Tues­day did he say sol­diers were lazy.He said he told the Up­per House it was im­prac­ti­cal to have the Reg­i­ment on stand­by wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen that may not hap­pen.

Ram­lo­gan said he does not know how the Ex­press got that wrong but he would just "leave it as bad jour­nal­ism for now."The AG said he told the Sen­ate the Reg­i­ment was pow­er­ful, com­mit­ted and dis­ci­plined. As for the de­bate on the bill, which was abrupt­ly ad­journed last Wednes­day af­ter it was re­ject­ed by In­de­pen­dent and Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors, Ram­lo­gan said, "The de­bate is not yet com­plet­ed. It has been ad­journed to be con­tin­ued."

He said the Gov­ern­ment re­mains open to sua­sion and good pro­pos­als will be con­sid­ered. Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, how­ev­er, have made no pro­posed amend­ments but have pre­sent­ed con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments, he said.He said when de­bate re­sumes, the Gov­ern­ment will present the stand­ing or­ders the De­fence Force is sup­posed to be guid­ed by when giv­en pow­ers sim­i­lar to those of the Po­lice Ser­vice.

The AG al­so re­spond­ed to PNM sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, who said in the Sen­ate that the Gov­ern­ment is mis­lead­ing the na­tion by say­ing coun­tries around the world have giv­en de­fence force of­fi­cers pow­ers sim­i­lar to those of po­lice of­fi­cers.Ram­lo­gan said Al-Rawi is mis­lead­ing the coun­try be­cause in Ja­maica, the prime min­is­ter has the pow­er to is­sue di­rec­tives to the Chief of De­fence Force for use of sol­diers in main­tain­ing law and or­der.