SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi was yes­ter­day forced to with­draw a “racist and ha­tred” state­ment he made against Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen which caused an up­roar in the Sen­ate.

The in­ci­dent took place while Ramdeen was de­liv­er­ing his con­tri­bu­tion on the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Bill.

In giv­ing his views on the leg­is­la­tion, Ramdeen de­scribed it as “as a good PR stunt for the Gov­ern­ment to tell the coun­try that in fight­ing crime you must ex­plain your wealth.”

He sug­gest­ed that when the leg­is­la­tion is im­ple­ment­ed, the first peo­ple who should ex­plain how they ac­quire their wealth was peo­ple in the Gov­ern­ment.

Ramdeen said it was high time that peo­ple who got a jump start in life many years ago should be made to ac­count to the pop­u­la­tion about their wealth.

“You want to tell peo­ple that if your wealth is over $500,000 you must ex­plain your wealth. What if it is over $500 mil­lion in one gen­er­a­tion? We turn in one gen­er­a­tion, from in­den­ture­ship and slav­ery, get an ed­u­ca­tion to be­come doc­tors and lawyers. But it have peo­ple who in this coun­try, in one gen­er­a­tion, they turn from sell­ing cloth....to be­ing mul­ti...they al­most own the en­tire coun­try. And you want to tell us about ex­plain­ing our wealth?” Ramdeen said.

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo im­me­di­ate­ly cau­tioned Ramdeen to “watch it, please!” as he was step­ping out of line.

Ramdeen tried to get Al-Rawi’s at­ten­tion, but he was pulled up by Kan­ga­loo who told him to di­rect his com­ments to her.

A vis­i­bly up­set Ramdeen asked Kan­ga­loo if she heard what the AG had said about him.

“He said I was en­gag­ing in racism,” Ramdeen said.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Tahar­qa Obi­ka jumped in, stat­ing the AG had ac­cused Ramdeen of “racism and ha­tred.”

“I wish, Mem­bers of the Cham­ber would leave the run­ning of the Cham­ber to me, okay. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al if it is you said that, please with­draw it,” Kan­ga­loo told Al-Rawi who ad­mit­ted “I did say it and I with­draw it.”

Ear­li­er, Ramdeen said the Gov­ern­ment was bring­ing “half baked leg­is­la­tion to the House. You bring a bill in the Low­er House and when you fin­ish de­bate it had 35 amend­ments.”

Ramdeen said there were gaps in cer­tain claus­es of the bill which the Cab­i­net had ap­proved.

While the Gov­ern­ment boast­ed that the bill will serve to re­duce crime, Ramdeen said there were 21 mur­ders as of April 15.

“You would fear no dif­fer­ent with this than you feared un­der the An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion that you said the po­lice was cry­ing out for. You see this idea that the Gov­ern­ment wants to take all the cred­it...every time they talk about a piece of crim­i­nal leg­is­la­tion is the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. Like the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is a mem­ber of the Cab­i­net.”

He said the bill was just to fool the pop­u­la­tion as crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty were at its worst in the his­to­ry of the coun­try.

“We will get sup­port, but the day you seek to use this leg­is­la­tion to per­se­cute any cit­i­zen who worked hard and you want them to ex­plain their wealth, you will an­swer in the court of law,” Ramdeen said.