Gail Alexan­der

Pro­vi­sions of the Ev­i­dence (Amend­ment) Act can be ma­nip­u­lat­ed and used against Gov­ern­ment's op­po­nents, in­clud­ing for­mer min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley, says UNC MP Sub­has Pan­day.

Speak­ing in Low­er House de­bate on the Ev­i­dence Bill yes­ter­day, Pan­day said the Gov­ern­ment should have put a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er in place and pre­sent­ed strong leg­is­la­tion to curb gangs be­fore bring­ing the Ev­i­dence (Amend­ment) Act. "If the min­is­ter had brought the an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion we'd have sup­port­ed it," Pan­day added. An­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion was the sub­ject of a re­cent meet­ing be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader and was among pro­posed bills which the Gov­ern­ment re­quired Op­po­si­tion sup­port for. The Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to send the bill to the Op­po­si­tion to study. Ex­press­ing con­cerns on the Ev­i­dence Bill, Pan­day said cer­tain as­pects might al­low any­one to walk in­to a po­lice sta­tion and file a com­plaint against some­one and not have to go to court on the grounds of be­ing fear­ful.

The law could be abused and it could wreck in­no­cent peo­ple's lives, Pan­day said, cit­ing a re­cent ar­son case. Pro­vi­sions could al­so be used against Gov­ern­ment's op­po­nents, "Like the MP for Diego Mar­tin West," Pan­day said, mo­tion­ing to PNM MP Kei­th Row­ley. Not­ing that the post of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er had not seen a per­ma­nent ap­point­ment in al­most four years, Pan­day added: "What about a Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to im­ple­ment this law? We've been try­ing since March 2006 to pass laws for a CoP and none has been ap­point­ed. If th��ey're re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in deal­ing with crime they would have ap­point­ed a CoP and then bring this bill." Pan­day said rather than pre­sent­ing long-promised an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion, the Gov­ern­ment had brought the Ev­i­dence Bill which could pil­lo­ry "every lit­tle per­son for every lit­tle of­fence." Pan­day com­plained that al­though Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion had held a meet­ing to try and clear up is­sues with the Ev­i­dence Bill on Wednes­day, no amend­ments were sent to the Op­po­si­tion to pe­ruse up to mid­day yes­ter­day. He called on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to ex­plain.

Not­ing T&T's cul­ture, Pan­day said the Op­po­si­tion could not sup­port a bill that opened in­no­cent per­sons to dan­ger in giv­ing state­ments or might see per­sons be­ing "coached" by po­lice when giv­ing video state­ments. If Gov­ern­ment pro­posed that the for­mat for giv­ing state­ments would pro­ceed by cer­tain rules, he said the ju­di­cial team for­mu­lat­ing the rules may not nec­es­sar­i­ly know what was in leg­is­la­tors' minds in draft­ing the bill. Pan­day sug­gest­ed that state­ments be tak­en at in­de­pen­dent lo­ca­tions such as the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre or UTT sites. Pan­day said the cur­rent reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing state­ment-tak­ing were not al­ways ad­hered to. "There are good po­lice but there are al­so bad po­lice and we must en­sure per­sons are pro­tect­ed," Pan­day said, not­ing neg­a­tive re­ports about po­lice, in­clud­ing guns be­ing found in po­lice sta­tions and po­lice al­leged­ly at­tend­ing casi­nos. Pan­day al­so re­quest­ed that video record­ings be done in such as way as to en­sure "pu­ri­ty" in the sys­tem. UNC MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh, who al­so be­gan a con­tri­bu­tion, called for Gov­ern­ment to state whether it was en­act­ing the law for the same rea­son the UK had en­act­ed a sim­i­lar law–due to ter­ror­ism.