Geisha Kow­lessar

Se­nior Coun­sel Mar­tin Daly has said it was wrong for Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona to sug­gest that in every bill to be as­sent­ed there is al­ways need for "cause for pause."Daly made the com­ment on a ra­dio pro­gramme yes­ter­day, as he made ref­er­ence to a press re­lease is­sued last week by Car­mona in re­la­tion to the con­tro­ver­sial SSA Amend­ment Bill which was re­cent­ly as­sent­ed.

"In every Bill to be as­sent­ed, there is al­ways a need or cause for pause. The as­sent­ing to Bills can nei­ther be pre-emp­tive or in­stan­ter, of­ten de­pen­dent up­on His Ex­cel­len­cy's con­sul­ta­tion and re­ceipt of le­gal ad­vice. Ac­cord­ing­ly, as­sent­ing to Bills of this Re­pub­lic, will con­tin­ue to be for His Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent, a process of con­sti­tu­tion­al and le­gal re­flec­tion, analy­sis and de­ter­mi­na­tion vis-a-vis his du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties pur­suant to sec­tion 61(2) of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Sec­tion 61(2) states: "When a Bill is pre­sent­ed to the Pres­i­dent for as­sent, he shall sig­ni­fy that he as­sents or with­holds his as­sent," Car­mona had said.

But yes­ter­day, Daly said there must nev­er be the case where the Pres­i­dent ques­tions the work and will of the Par­lia­ment.

"That is wrong. That can't be the norm. There may be ex­cep­tion­al cas­es in which he (the Pres­i­dent) may want to sug­gest a mod­est de­lay while any points he rais­es are con­sid­ered.

"But the idea that he can go out and get a bet­ter opin­ion than the Par­lia­ment...all of that is quite wrong and he is mis­di­rect­ing him­self be­cause it can't be in every case," Daly said.He added that the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 mat­ter was an ex­am­ple of an ex­cep­tion­al case where there was a lot of con­cern that the as­pect of im­mu­ni­ty had slipped in.

"In a case like that, the Pres­i­dent may have a brief cause for pause and ask the ex­ec­u­tive to ex­plain how it got slipped in at the eleventh hour and af­ter that he has to as­sent," Daly said.

"So the idea that in every case he must can­vas opin­ions...he can't get some le­gal opin­ion that over­rides the will of Par­lia­ment. All of that is an­ti-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic," Daly main­tained, adding that the Pres­i­dent did not have such dis­cre­tion un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Daly said it was crit­i­cal that the of­fice of the Pres­i­dent op­er­ate strict­ly ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the is­sue, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Ma­haraj said while the Pres­i­dent was ob­lig­at­ed to as­sent a bill, he al­so has the pow­er to of­fer coun­sel to both the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion from time to time.

"Al­though he may not have le­gal pow­er to pre­vent as­sent­ing of a bill he has the du­ty and the pow­er to coun­sel the par­ties if he sees things are not right in a par­tic­u­lar mea­sure. He can ask them, he can try to per­suade them but he can­not com­pel the Gov­ern­ment or the Par­lia­ment not to want to pro­ceed with the as­sent of the bill," Ma­haraj said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

"And in a con­tro­ver­sial bill such as this, the Head of State can try to coun­sel the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion leader and to see whether there can be con­sen­sus."

He said there have been in­stances where pre­vi­ous pres­i­dents had de­layed the as­sent of a bill. He made ref­er­ence to for­mer Pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son, who had re­fused to ac­cept rec­om­men­da­tions for the ap­point­ment of gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors when Bas­deo Pan­day was prime min­is­ter.

Robin­son had de­layed the ap­point­ments for a pe­ri­od of time to seek ad­vice, but ul­ti­mate­ly gave in.

"The Pres­i­dent does not have the pow­er to pre­vent a bill which was passed by Par­lia­ment to be as­sent­ed, be­cause un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion the Pres­i­dent acts on the ad­vice in those mat­ters on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Cab­i­net," Ma­haraj said.

But he said the sign­ing of a bill was not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly done by the Pres­i­dent, as it must be prop­er­ly read.

"There will al­ways be a pause be­cause the Pres­i­dent ought to read the bill be­fore sign­ing it. There are ad­van­tages in the Pres­i­dent paus­ing, but the pause can­not be to the ex­tent to un­der­mine and sub­vert the will of the Par­lia­ment," Ma­haraj said.

Time to make prop­er laws

On the is­sue of 13 peo­ple charged with be­ing gang mem­bers in the Dana See­ta­hal mur­der in­quiry be­ing freed of those charges re­cent­ly, Daly said this opened an­oth­er can of worms which need­ed to be ex­am­ined.

"Why is it that we pass bad leg­is­la­tion and why is it we have these dis­as­ters?

"The whole way we go about pass­ing laws with ridicu­lous dead­lines, some of which are self-im­posed and some of which are im­posed by in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies...we sim­ply can't make good laws un­der those con­di­tions," he said.

On this coun­try's poor mur­der de­tec­tion rate, Daly said key sys­tems must be ex­am­ined, adding it was a shame the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James was staffed with just one foren­sic pathol­o­gist.

"Every so of­ten, the pathol­o­gist's con­tract runs out and then there is a big out­cry over what is go­ing to hap­pen to all the pend­ing cas­es.

"And then you have to re­hire the same per­son.

"We have been mak­ing the same mis­takes over and over again. You have to ex­am­ine why the sys­tem is fail­ing," Daly said.