Vice-chairman of the Congress of the People (COP) Vernon de Lima received unanimous support when he called for hangings to resume, at Tuesday's meeting of the Ministry of Legal Affairs' national consultation on constitutional reform.The meeting took place that the Himalaya Club, Barataria, and was headed by Legal Affairs Minister Prakash Ramadhar. The panel included Justice Sebastian Ventor, Justice Amrika Tiwary-Reddy, Drs Merle Hodge and Hamid Ghany and Carlos Dillon.
Dillon was a recipient of a Humming Bird Gold Medal in 1980 and the Golden Helm International Award from Germany for outstanding contributions to the development of international tourism.In his contribution, de Lima referred to section 19 of the questionnaire handed out at the start of the meeting. The topic was the judiciary, and on the topic of final appeals it asked whether T&T ought to retain appeals to the Privy Council or make the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) the final court for all matters.
De Lima justified his call to hang convicted criminals by saying the crime situation was out of control."The situation in our country today with crime is outrageous," he said."I feel very strong about what is happening with crime and more particularly with murders."Saying he was a lawyer for 47 years, de Lima described the spiralling crime rate as a "monster with criminals being in charge."
"Abolish all this recourse to the international organisations so we could impose our death penalty on these criminals," de Lima urged.He said it was time the Government send a signal to "these vagabonds" who were killing women, children and the elderly.On the issue of the Privy Council, de Lima called for a total abolition of the body adding it was time the Government showed its confidence in local and regional legal minds.
"Either we have confidence in our independent status or we do not," he said.On April 24, 2012, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced that legislation would be brought to the Parliament to remove the British Privy Council as this country's final appellate court and replaced with the CCJ–with respect to criminal matters. Civil matters would still go before the Privy Council.
Others who attended the meeting used it as a forum to discuss a range of issues ranging from granting fathers paternal leave to implementing a law to ensure parents send their children to school.