Leah So­rias

Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's Ver­na St Rose-Greaves says if Gov­ern­ment moves ahead with its plan to re­sume hang­ings she will have no choice but to leave.

Speak­ing to I95.5 FM yes­ter­day St Rose-Greaves, who is Spe­cial Ad­vi­sor on Chil­dren's Af­fairs to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, said if she could not in­flu­ence change with re­gards to the is­sue she would walk. "I will have no choice but to step out," she said. She said she was very pas­sion­ate about the is­sue and that she had done a lot of work and re­search on it. "I have spo­ken to peo­ple on death row in sev­er­al coun­tries, I have spo­ken to mur­der vic­tims' fam­i­lies... I have raised chil­dren whose par­ents have been killed," St Rose-Greaves said. "I have raised chil­dren who have killed peo­ple, in the con­text of the state, in the con­text of wel­fare, and I know there were things that need­ed to be done that were not done as a so­ci­ety," she added.

She said the death penal­ty has been an is­sue with all for­mer Gov­ern­ments. "Peo­ple have been call­ing for pop-necks, peo­ple want peo­ple in Wood­ford Square, peo­ple want to stone peo­ple," she said. She said oth­er al­ter­na­tives should be con­sid­ered in­stead of hang­ings. "How do we pull back and have those con­ver­sa­tions that will al­low for us to even con­sid­er oth­er things like how do we take care of our chil­dren," she said. "What about our pris­ons? What are some of the things that led us to the place that we are in? How do we roll back and put things in place that will coun­ter­act some of the fall­outs? What do we do for vic­tims?" she asked. 0The top­ic of the death penal­ty was re­cent­ly brought to the fore by Min­is­ter of Works Jack Warn­er. In his ca­pac­i­ty as act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Warn­er said he be­lieved hang­ings will curb crime.

He said: "I am con­vinced that, were we to re­in­sti­tute hang­ings, which is the law of the land, it will have a dent on crime. I am con­vinced." Ac­cord­ing to Warn­er there were 295 con­victs on death row. "The law says death by hang­ings. And if a per­son is con­vict­ed and has of course used all his mea­sures of re­lief up to the Privy Coun­cil, why should he stay in the prison any­more?" Warn­er asked then. A vo­cif­er­ous St Rose-Greaves in a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle yes­ter­day said she re­mained op­posed to the PP's move to recom­mence hang­ings. Her state­ments have been sup­port­ed by pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers' and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud.

"On a per­son­al lev­el I hap­pen to agree whole­heart­ed­ly with her that hang­ing is bar­bar­ic and re­duces us to the very lev­el of the mur­der­ers whom we claim to dis­like so much," Aboud told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. Aboud felt law­less­ness in T&T was stim­u­lat­ed by the fact that 50 per cent of mur­der­ers and rapists could not be caught and con­vict­ed.

view­points

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS)– Sat Ma­haraj: I" am sup­port­ing the death penal­ty. The SDMS is of the firm view that be­cause of the tar­di­ness of both the le­gal and prison ad­min­is­tra­tive sys­tems the crim­i­nals in our land are free to ter­rorise the pop­u­la­tion. "On­ly strong mea­sures could bring back the old days when life and prop­er­ty were re­spect­ed and pro­tect­ed."

Pun­dit Bramdeo Ma­haraj–IRO past pres­i­dent:

"If we didn't have to ex­er­cise the death penal­ty it will be bet­ter. If peo­ple know they can kill who­ev­er they like and con­tin­ue as they like they will be en­cour­aged to kill. "It will be good to have it there as a de­ter­rent. If it is not a de­ter­rent then what is a de­ter­rent? "Quite a few mur­ders are com­mit­ted in self-de­fence. If the mur­ders are pre­med­i­tat­ed then we should ad­min­is­ter the death penal­ty."

Ya­coob Ali–AS­JA pres­i­dent

"AS­JA's point of view is that Is­lam al­lows the death penal­ty for mur­der. There should be al­so com­pen­sa­tion by the of­fend­er of the crime to the fam­i­ly of the slain. We have ab­solute­ly no ob­jec­tion to the death penal­ty be­ing re­in­stat­ed."