Gail Alexan­der

The UNC’s po­si­tion on bail was cor­rect, ac­cord­ing to Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, who said yes­ter­day’s Privy Coun­cil rul­ing against the state vin­di­cat­ed the par­ty’s re­cent non-sup­port of the Bail (Amend­ment) Bill 2022.

Lutch­me­di­al spoke fol­low­ing the Privy Coun­cil’s dis­missal of the State’s ap­peal on the Ak­ili Charles mat­ter.

Lutch­me­di­al said the judge­ment con­firmed the lo­cal Court of Ap­peal’s Feb­ru­ary rul­ing on Charles’ mat­ter, that the au­to­mat­ic de­nial of bail isn’t rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able in a so­ci­ety that has a prop­er re­spect for the rights and free­dom of the in­di­vid­ual.

Lutch­me­di­al said, “The judg­ment is a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment in the law of hu­man rights and how the state must bal­ance the ob­jec­tives of a law against the fights and free­doms guar­an­teed by the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“The fact is that now, a per­son ac­cused of a crime, will have the abil­i­ty to ap­proach the court to re­quest bail and the pros­e­cu­tion will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ar­gue against it based on facts and cir­cum­stances, not some sweep­ing dic­tate hand­ed down by Par­lia­ment. This is a vic­to­ry for democ­ra­cy and the rule of law.”

She added, “In­stead of ac­cept­ing the Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion de­liv­ered by the Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice in the Charles mat­ter and re­fo­cus­ing their crime-fight­ing ef­forts, the Row­ley-led Gov­ern­ment wast­ed re­sources to lose an­oth­er mat­ter in the Privy Coun­cil.”

Lutch­me­di­al said the rul­ing vin­di­cat­ed the Op­po­si­tion’s stance against the re­cent Bail (Amend­ment) Bill 2022, which at­tempt­ed to ex­tend the life of a pro­vi­sion which placed re­stric­tions on right to ap­ply for bail.

She said the Op­po­si­tion was “ful­ly aware and cog­nizant of the im­pli­ca­tions” the Charles de­ci­sion has on the evolv­ing lo­cal ju­rispru­dence and urged the Gov­ern­ment to fo­cus on crime-fight­ing meth­ods.

But she claimed Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus was on pre-tri­al de­ten­tion of per­sons who ought to en­joy the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence.

Lutch­me­di­al ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of “us­ing the Charles” case to at­tack Op­po­si­tion “mem­bers past and present” for rep­re­sent­ing Charles.

She crit­i­cised the past at­tor­ney gen­er­al and ac­cused the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter of us­ing the of­fice of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to build sup­port for the bill and “ex­ert pres­sure on the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port” it.