The im­por­tant is­sue con­cern­ing the pow­ers that the Pres­i­dent has or does not have is one of se­ri­ous pub­lic in­ter­est.All laws prop­er­ly passed in Par­lia­ment should be sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly con­sid­ered and pro­claimed as a mat­ter of course.

While Mr Daly em­pha­sis­es the point that the Pres­i­dent should act on the ad­vice of the cab­i­net, Mr Ramesh Ma­haraj feels the Pres­i­dent should still spend some time to con­sid­er and re­flect.

Once pro­claimed, the Act passed by Par­lia­ment should be im­ple­ment­ed. A few months ago, there was a news­pa­per ref­er­ence to the Sen­tenc­ing Com­mis­sion Act of 2000, which as the writer stat­ed, was prop­er­ly pro­claimed but up to now, 16 years af­ter, not im­ple­ment­ed.

The im­por­tant point in the cur­rent de­bate are pow­ers held by the Pres­i­dent in that the Sen­tenc­ing Com­mis­sion Act em­pow­ers the Pres­i­dent to make ap­point­ments "as he sees fit" mean­ing in his own dis­cre­tion as al­lowed in Sec­tion 80 of the Con­sti­tu­tion. I was sur­prised to find such Pres­i­den­tial pow­er that seem to be ig­nored in the present de­bate.

Fur­ther­more, giv­en the oth­er pub­lic con­cern about im­pris­on­ment, par­don­ing and so on, this Sen­tenc­ing Com­mis­sion could be of great help to the ju­di­cia­ry and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

When last I checked the law books, the Sen­tenc­ing Com­mis­sion Act was there. Were the ap­point­ments made? If yes, are they func­tion­ing in any help­ful way? The pub­lic should be aware of any de­vel­op­ments.

Is­abelle Saun­ders-Ma­haraj