At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi has called on cit­i­zens to ap­ply pres­sure on mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion to re­verse their de­ci­sion not to sup­port the Bail Amend­ment Bill. 

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at his of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Al-Rawi sug­gest­ed that pub­lic out­cry would be the on­ly thing that may save the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, which was again re­ject­ed by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her MPs, last Fri­day. 

“The on­ly way the pop­u­la­tion will ob­tain its pro­tec­tion is if there is a pub­lic out­cry,” Al-Rawi said, as he claimed that sim­i­lar ac­tion caused the Op­po­si­tion to change its po­si­tion in the past in­clud­ing with the For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAC­TA) and with leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish child mar­riages. 

Al Rawi sought to ques­tion Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ob­ject to the leg­is­la­tion, which seeks to de­ny bail for per­sons charged with firearm of­fences, as he point­ed out that her gov­ern­ment pi­o­neered sim­i­lar but more re­stric­tive leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tives on bail be­tween 2011 and 2015. 

“Where was the con­cern for set-up by po­lice in her tenure?” Al-Rawi said. 

He not­ed that un­der the amend­ment bill, which was passed by the Sen­ate but stuck at the Com­mit­tee Stage be­fore the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, still al­lowed peo­ple who are de­nied bail to ap­proach a court for bail in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances. 

Al-Rawi al­so point­ed to the fact such leg­is­la­tion, which even­tu­al­ly ex­pired af­ter a change in gov­ern­ment with the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions, was ap­plied dur­ing the 2011 State of Emer­gency while Per­sad-Bisses­sar served as prime min­is­ter. 

He claimed that af­ter cit­i­zens, who were af­fect­ed by such leg­is­la­tion in 2011 sued the State, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, re­fused to tes­ti­fy on be­half of the State.

“Nei­ther of them was will­ing to give ev­i­dence to save the cit­i­zens from the dam­ages and costs that came and have cost mil­lions of dol­lars,” he said. 

He al­so re­ject­ed her al­leged claims that the leg­is­la­tion would tar­get “poor black peo­ple” and would lead to po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS). 

“The record shows that the TTPS has act­ed against peo­ple who have held or con­tin­ue to hold po­lit­i­cal of­fice on ei­ther side of the coin,” he said. 

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, Al-Rawi re­peat­ed­ly com­mend­ed Grif­fith for ad­vo­cat­ing for the amend­ments, which he (Grif­fith) was con­fi­dent would as­sist based on suc­cess­es dur­ing his stint as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter dur­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s tenure. 

“You can­not watch a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, who sat as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, say what he said yes­ter­day and not be deeply con­cerned about your fate,” Al-Rawi said. 

He point­ed to sta­tis­tics that showed that there were 17,271 re­ports of firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences and 6,387 per­sons be­ing charged be­tween 2009 and last year. He not­ed that be­tween 2015 and 2019, there were 1,619 mur­ders com­mit­ted with firearms, and of those 638 were clas­si­fied gang-re­lat­ed. 

He sug­gest­ed that the leg­is­la­tion, cou­pled with rad­i­cal im­prove­ments in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, in­tro­duced un­der his tenure, would great­ly as­sist the Po­lice Ser­vice in re­duc­ing crime. 

“At least the po­lice would have a bet­ter fight­ing chance,” Al-Rawi said.