Gail Alexan­der

Sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion de­signed to as­sist the jus­tice sys­tem will be brought to Par­lia­ment short­ly, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour con­firmed yes­ter­day.

Ar­mour did so in the Sen­ate dur­ing de­bate on a pri­vate mo­tion by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark called for a law for par­lia­men­tary au­ton­o­my.

The AG said build­ing par­lia­men­tary au­ton­o­my is a work in progress. He al­so said Gov­ern­ment hasn’t pri­ori­tised ad­di­tion­al steps, such as full­time MPs or the tabling of au­ton­o­my bills, since there is work to be done and that work is on­go­ing.

“We are al­so giv­ing leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties to oth­er leg­isla­tive en­deav­ours. On­ly this past week I’ve spo­ken to the cur­rent leg­isla­tive agen­da which is be­ing giv­en at­ten­tion by the Gov­ern­ment,” Ar­mour said.

“There is, among oth­ers, the Tri­al by Judge Alone Bill, the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice In­dictable Pro­ce­dures (Amend­ment) Bill which will short­ly be com­ing to Par­lia­ment and the Ar­bi­tra­tion Bill which is a work in progress and will short­ly al­so be brought to this Par­lia­ment.

“We ac­knowl­edge there is a lot of work to be done on the leg­isla­tive agen­da and whilst we do not shirk from our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to progress the de­vel­op­ment of par­lia­men­tary au­ton­o­my by fur­ther leg­isla­tive en­deav­ours. We must be care­ful to look ful­ly and in depth at the ex­am­ples that abound around the Caribbean, at the re­search that has been done on this sub­ject and en­gage and con­tin­ue to en­gage with our Par­lia­ment, Clerks of both Hous­es and en­gage them in mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions with oth­er stake­hold­ers as we progress the con­cept of Par­lia­men­tary au­ton­o­my.”

He said in due course, “as and when” that be­comes a part of the leg­isla­tive struc­ture, the leg­isla­tive re­view team will reach out to stake­hold­ers and en­gage cit­i­zens’ in­put to re­fine and fur­ther de­fine par­lia­men­tary au­ton­o­my.

Not­ing the con­cept of Par­lia­men­tary au­ton­o­my in­volv­ing La­timer House prin­ci­ples, Ar­mour said those prin­ci­ples un­der­score the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers amon Par­lia­ment, the Ju­di­cia­ry and the Ex­ec­u­tive.

He said part of the con­ver­sa­tion will nec­es­sar­i­ly have to in­clude, T&T’s “em­brace of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) as our apex court.”

The AG point­ed out: “The syn­on­mys of au­ton­o­my are free­dom, self de­ter­mi­na­tion, self gov­ern­ment, self rule, sov­er­eign­ty and lib­er­ty. We may not en­gage this ques­tion of par­lia­men­tary au­ton­o­my with­in the con­text of the La­timer House prin­ci­ples of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers with­out se­ri­ous­ly hold­ing Sen­a­tor Mark and his Op­po­si­tion col­leagues to get se­ri­ous and sup­port this Gov­ern­ment on leg­is­la­tion to make the CCJ our fi­nal court of ap­peal.”

Ar­mour not­ed that on­ly last week Cari­com lead­ers met in Port-of-Spain to ex­am­ine re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion­al and gov­er­nance struc­tures to ad­dress crime and vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health threat .

He said T&T’s Par­lia­ment has been func­tion­ing at sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved lev­els over the years and com­pares very favourably with oth­er par­lia­ments.

“Stand­ing Or­ders have been re­viewed, a com­mit­tee sys­tem has been strength­ened and well de­ployed, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems and process­es have been far ad­vanced. Par­lia­ment is alive, vi­brant and well con­nect­ed to the pop­u­la­tion.”