Gail Alexan­der

No pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, no An­ti-Gang bill sup­port!

"If you don't bring the Pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, we'll iso­late you! We'll not sup­port you!" said UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Mon­day night. Un­bend­ing in her firm de­c­la­ra­tion, she main­tained the UNC's trade-off po­si­tion on the two pieces of leg­is­la­tion de­spite crit­i­cism and calls for the Op­po­si­tion to work with Gov­ern­ment and bring the An­ti-Gang bill back to Par­lia­ment.

Calls arose last Fri­day and con­tin­ued yes­ter­day from busi­ness groups - af­ter the Op­po­si­tion blanked Gov­ern­ment's amend­ment to ex­tend the An­ti-Gang bill for 30 months.

At Mon­day night's UNC meet­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "pro-PNM el­e­ments in the me­dia" had a field day com­plain­ing about the out­come.

But she said it was a "to­tal lie" that gang­sters will go free be­cause of the bill's de­feat and she not­ed the DPP had said cas­es wouldn't col­lapse if the law wasn't passed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there are laws that cov­er of­fences list­ed in the An­ti-Gang law: "Ex­cept for the of­fence of be­ing a gang leader or mem­ber, you don't need this law to lock up some­one for mur­der, wound­ing, traf­fick­ing, rob­bery."

"So po­lice do your jobs and en­force the law as it stands, you don't need this dra­con­ian law - it's failed. Why should we sup­port some­thing that's failed?!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion was need­ed since the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er had said last year, gangs were get­ting state con­tracts. She ad­mit­ted in the COVID pan­dem­ic "not many con­tracts were go­ing out".

But she in­sist­ed the "pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion was need­ed for fight­ing the gangs."

She then spoke about the sale of the Guaracara re­fin­ery and planned sale of Petrotrin non-core as­sets and bun­ga­lows. She said "giv­en PNM's track record on prop­er­ty dis­pos­al," pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion was al­so need­ed for that.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­it­er­at­ed her con­cern on the 97 times she said At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­cused them­selves from Cab­i­net meet­ings last term.

List­ing prop­er­ty mat­ters she al­leged Al-Rawi re­cused him­self for, she added it was wrong for Cab­i­net to sanc­tion prop­er­ty mat­ters linked to min­is­ters even if they re­cused them­selves.

"We say bring on the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, it'll deal with gangs and white-col­lar gangs and 'friends and fam­i­ly'! No pro­cure­ment law, no sup­port for An­ti-Gang law! We won't al­low for raid­ing of the Trea­sury!"

Throw­ing words on the UNC's elec­tion, she al­so ad­vised the "haters to get a life, do some­thing nice, spend some time with your wife and chil­dren."

PNM could use gang law against us - Mooni­lal

UNC Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the Op­po­si­tion can­not give Gov­ern­ment the au­thor­i­ty of the An­ti-Gang bill since he feels Gov­ern­ment could use the law to "lock-up" Op­po­si­tion politi­cians and oth­er peo­ple, claim­ing they are gang mem­bers.

Slam­ming "un­fair at­tacks" against the Op­po­si­tion's re­jec­tion of the bill, he said, "Many ganged up on UNC, some of those talk­ing op­er­ate like a palm tree in a hur­ri­cane, swing­ing left to right, any­how the breeze blow."

"This has been the height of hypocrisy and dis­hon­esty by peo­ple who wear jack­et and tie - maybe a bow tie - but read noth­ing. If you ask them how many per­sons have been ar­rest­ed un­der the an­ti-gang law - they don’t know. They don't know how many were charged un­der that law or con­vict­ed."

"Busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers out in full force con­demn­ing Op­po­si­tion. Ask any of them if they have da­ta on the work­ings of the law."

Mooni­lal said, "We can­not give PNM this au­thor­i­ty. Gary Grif­fith’s term will end, who will be the next Com­mis­sion­er to im­ple­ment this dra­con­ian law? What pre­vents a PNM CoP from lock­ing up Op­po­si­tion politi­cians, re­li­gious lead­ers and so­cial ac­tivists as gang mem­bers or aid­ing and sup­port­ing a gang."

"In re­cent times PNM used the Par­lia­ment to over­throw the con­sti­tu­tion by giv­ing the PNM con­trolled Par­lia­ment com­mit­tees a pow­er to dis­qual­i­fy an Op­po­si­tion mem­ber from the ser­vice of the House be­cause they say he con­flict­ed. With no re­course of the full Par­lia­ment or the court."

"They ac­cused us of hav­ing links to gangs when one PNM MP and one PNM MP alone in­vit­ed a re­put­ed gang leader to have drinks at the Pres­i­dent house."

Mooni­lal said the UNC pro­duced po­lice sta­tis­tics that showed the law wasn't very ef­fec­tive.

"So why is the Op­po­si­tion be­ing cas­ti­gat­ed for not sup­port­ing this? Even the gov­ern­ment ad­mit­ted the leg­is­la­tion need­ed re­view­ing. We call for a fun­da­men­tal re­view of the An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion to find out why it’s not work­ing as ef­fec­tive­ly as it should."