Sascha Wil­son

For­mer mem­ber of par­lia­ment and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Sub­has Pan­day says the amend­ment of the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Act favours the priv­i­leged in so­ci­ety.

Pan­day was speak­ing dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at his San Fer­nan­do law cham­bers where he ad­dressed the con­tro­ver­sial is­sue of the pool par­ty at Bay­side Tow­ers in Co­corite.

Since videos of the par­ty be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, many peo­ple ques­tioned why the po­lice were le­nient with those par­ty-go­ers when com­pared to the treat­ment met­ed out res­i­dents caught par­ty­ing in oth­er ar­eas, in­clud­ing Sea Lots and St James.

Pan­day had pre­vi­ous­ly voiced his dis­ap­proval with some as­pects of the amend­ment, in­clud­ing the fixed penal­ty for face masks. He said the Bayshore in­ci­dent was a re­sult of the “half- baked piece of leg­is­la­tion” which was a knee-jerk re­ac­tion to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“While a $179,000 have been in­flict­ed for face masks for the or­di­nary, the priv­i­lege is par­ty­ing,” he said.

Pan­day said the law did not deal with gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties where a num­ber of pri­vate res­i­dences as­sem­ble in a com­mon area.

“You have not passed a law deal­ing with gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties. The ques­tion is could those per­sons who were in that pool par­ty could they have been per­sons who could have trans­mit­ted the COVID to oth­er peo­ple on the out­side? That is why I said the law was to­tal­ly in­ef­fi­cient.”

In its cur­rent form, he said the law is tilt­ed against the poor in favour of the wealthy.

“This can be clear­ly man­i­fest­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment when peo­ple com­plained about the $1,000 fine be­ing too bur­den­some to the poor, he said, ‘If you poor don’t break the law.’ But Mr Prime Min­is­ter the law is so de­signed as to not to catch the priv­i­leged While the poor is be­ing bru­talised the priv­i­leged par­ty­ing.”

As for the re­sponse of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, Pan­day said, “I ad­mire him on the way he at­tempts to deal with crime. How­ev­er, on this oc­ca­sion, he him­self adopt­ed a strange po­si­tion in that he said, ‘Oh when there were peo­ple down by Bayshore bathing and break­ing the law I on­ly spoke to them and didn’t charge them. Well, Mr Com­mis­sion­er you are re­al­ly com­par­ing zabo­cas with pom­me­cytheres in that they are two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. One is where you had the pow­er to im­ple­ment the law and you didn’t do it and this is a case where the law is so in­ef­fi­cient you did not know if you have the abil­i­ty to deal with those peo­ple.”

Pan­day al­so took a swipe at the op­po­si­tion. He said the op­po­si­tion ap­pears to have been so bad­ly beat­en and bru­tal­ized by the al­le­ga­tions of the Gov­ern­ment that they were ob­struc­tion­ists that ap­peared to have sur­ren­dered and have joined the gov­ern­ment in pass­ing bad pop­ulist leg­is­la­tion.

“The op­po­si­tion should have called for the reg­u­la­tions to be sub­ject­ed to the neg­a­tive res­o­lu­tion of the Par­lia­ment so…it can be re­viewed by Par­lia­ment.”

He al­so sug­gest­ed that sim­i­lar to a par­ent be­ing li­able if their eight-year-old child is caught not wear­ing a mask, land­lords and/or oc­cu­piers should al­so be held vic­ar­i­ous­ly li­able for per­sons breach­ing the law on their premis­es.

“I humbly sub­mit if that is done that would be a step in equat­ing the harsh­ness of the law,” he said.

In a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Grif­fith said there was some am­bi­gu­i­ty con­cern­ing the po­lice’s au­thor­i­ty to act on so­cial gath­er­ings at pri­vate premis­es. How­ev­er, he said, the Bayshore pool par­ty is still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.