Rec­om­men­da­tions from a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee on the pro­posed pep­per spray leg­is­la­tion will go to Cab­i­net next week, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al- Rawi said yes­ter­day.

He spoke af­ter yes­ter­day’s Cab­i­net meet­ing and af­ter Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein called him out on the pep­per spray leg­is­la­tion.

Ho­sein said since the Jan­u­ary mur­der of court clerk An­drea Bhar­rat many oth­ers faced a sim­i­lar fate, “Yet the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to dis­re­gard the pub­lic calls to de­crim­i­nalise non-lethal weapons.”

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP added, “While the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al pub­licly de­clared on the 11th Feb­ru­ary 2021 that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil ap­proved the use of pep­per spray as a de­vice for safe­ty and he fur­ther de­clared that he draft­ed the law al­ready, we must ask the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al where are these laws that he claimed to have draft­ed al­ready? It’s been over two months.”

Yes­ter­day Al-Rawi ex­plained Cab­i­net had com­plet­ed the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the pro­posed bill on the mat­ter he had tak­en to it pre­vi­ous­ly. He added that Cab­i­net‘s Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es sub-com­mit­tee would give rec­om­men­da­tions on the pep­per spray bill and Cab­i­net would treat with that next week.

Al-Rawi added, “Sad­dam Ho­sein rep­re­sents the con­tin­ued fail­ure of the UNC’s log­ic—he ought to con­fess he was against the changes in the laws to pro­tect the very peo­ple he now pre­tends to cry for.

“This young man rep­re­sents the worst of in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­hon­esty and is in­tent on fid­dling while the pop­u­la­tion grap­ples with se­ri­ous is­sues,” the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said.

“So Mr Ho­sein needs to stop play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness—peo­ple are tired and de­serve bet­ter. Don’t come and cry now when UNC couldn’t have been both­ered to do the pep­per spray law in their term.”

PM des­per­ate to di­vide - UNC

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress yes­ter­day ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley of seek­ing to pit the coun­try against it­self.

Com­ment­ing on Row­ley’s state­ment on Wednes­day, where he said re­duced COVID-19 com­pli­ance is all over the coun­try and To­ba­go shouldn’t be blamed for the re­cent surge, the UNC stat­ed: “Kei­th Row­ley, des­per­ate for dis­trac­tion, once again seeks to pit the coun­try against it­self. No one ever blamed To­ba­go for the COVID spike. We blame Kei­th Row­ley and his poli­cies.”

The par­ty al­so said the prime min­is­ter’s mind twist­ed that in­to na­tion­al scape­goat­ing, at­tempt­ing to pit To­ba­go against Ca­roni and Vic­to­ria.