Richard?Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­press­ing full sup­port for end­ing child mar­riages in T&T, say­ing it was not a re­li­gious is­sue but an in­ap­pro­pri­ate cul­tur­al prac­tice which must be stopped.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke about the is­sue dur­ing yes­ter­day's news con­fer­ence of the Op­po­si­tion in the Par­lia­ment.

The Mus­lim Mar­riage and Di­vorce Act which al­lows for girls to mar­ry at age 12 and the Hin­du Mar­riage Act which al­lows girls to mar­ry at 14 have evoked con­tro­ver­sy in re­cent days with the Gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ing that the age lim­it must be har­monised with the age for sex­u­al con­sent, which is 18.

Pres­i­dent of the IRO, Har­ryper­sad Ma­haraj, and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, have in­sist­ed that the law should not be amend­ed but the Ro­man Catholic Church and Pres­by­te­ri­ans were among those in favour of har­mon­is­ing the mar­riage age with that of sex­u­al con­sent.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the cur­rent law dis­crim­i­nates against girls as "they can be mar­ried off at an ear­li­er age than the boys and there­fore we are in favour of the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the le­gal age." She said that the le­gal age should be in­creased.

She said the ex­ist­ing ages un­der the Hin­du and Mus­lim Mar­riage Acts "can­not be a re­al­is­tic age that any­one would want to sup­port."

She added that while in the past such ages may be seen to have been rea­son­able "we are say­ing that to­day we are in a much more egal­i­tar­i­an so­ci­ety and those ar­gu­ments are ir­rel­e­vant. We must be brave enough to do what is right and in this case what is right is to re­vise the mar­riage age up­wards."

"We are all in sup­port of the re­vi­sion up­wards of the age of mar­riage," she added.

She is al­so say­ing that the State must en­sure that "there is no ac­com­mo­da­tion for statu­to­ry rape and we must strict­ly en­force the law in re­la­tion to old­er men hav­ing sex­u­al re­la­tions with chil­dren."

Ac­cord­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in­creas­ing the le­gal age for mar­riage alone will not be suf­fi­cient to pro­tect chil­dren.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Op­po­si­tion UNC did not share the views of the IRO pres­i­dent on the mat­ter. She in­sist­ed: "It is not a re­li­gious ar­gu­ment at all, it has noth­ing to do with re­li­gion. I think it has more to do with cul­ture and tra­di­tion," she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said T&T was a sec­u­lar State and she "can­not find in any re­li­gion where God has man­dat­ed that you can get mar­ried at 12."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so claimed there was "in­equal­i­ty of treat­ment and favouritism" in the al­most im­me­di­ate is­su­ing of a cheque val­ued at over $400,000 to at­tor­ney Ker­win Gar­cia for le­gal work done for Ude­cott, which is chaired by Noel Gar­cia, his un­cle.