Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day broached the idea of mak­ing COVID-19 vac­cines manda­to­ry and the re­ac­tion on so­cial me­dia was swift.

Row­ley raised the mat­ter as he spoke with for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress sen­a­tor Dr Bhoe Tewarie dur­ing the lat­ter’s morn­ing show. Dur­ing the in­ter­view, Row­ley said if a vari­ant of COVID-19 be­came more vir­u­lent, then Gov­ern­ment would do what was nec­es­sary to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion.

“And we know through sci­en­tif­ic in­for­ma­tion that there is a vac­cine that could pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing, then the Gov­ern­ment would have to take a de­ci­sion on be­half of those per­sons who have the right to pro­tect them­selves from this virus,” he said.

“So a de­ci­sion will have to be made.”

Row­ley added, “If the vol­un­tary sit­u­a­tion gives us the re­sults we could live with, then we live with it be­ing vol­un­tary but some coun­tries have al­ready gone be­yond that.

“As long as the cir­cum­stances can be man­aged with a vol­un­tary pro­gramme, then I see the Gov­ern­ment al­low­ing a vol­un­tary pro­gramme to pro­ceed, but if the sit­u­a­tion changes and an­oth­er kind of de­ci­sion is re­quired, then that is what gov­ern­ments are for.”

Row­ley said this mat­ter went to court in France. He said that even vol­un­tary trav­el could pres­sure peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, vac­ci­na­tions are noth­ing new.

“This is noth­ing unique for the hu­man pop­u­la­tion,” he said.

He said vac­ci­na­tions were al­so not an in­va­sion of rights.

“It is to pro­tect hu­man life and if the de­ci­sion at the lev­el of the Gov­ern­ment that is re­spon­si­ble for the wider pop­u­la­tion, where the ma­jor­i­ty would like to pre­serve their life, where there is some­thing avail­able, then the Gov­ern­ment would have to take that de­ci­sion,” Row­ley said.

Hours af­ter the is­sue was post­ed to so­cial me­dia in re­ports, that por­tion of his in­ter­view was re­post­ed to the of­fi­cial Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s (OPM) Face­book page.

Most peo­ple on the OPM page were in sup­port of his call, say­ing “manda­to­ry, the way to go.”

Oth­ers were less en­thused, say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment was look­ing for a law­suit. Oth­ers said that pre­vi­ous vac­cines that are manda­to­ry were around for years and not as new as the COVID-19 vac­cines and oth­ers called for mon­i­tor­ing of vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple.

Ghany: Three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty would be need­ed

Mean­while, two Con­sti­tu­tion­al ex­perts yes­ter­day weighed in about whether the Gov­ern­ment would need to bring leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment and use ei­ther a spe­cial or three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in or­der to make COVID-19 vac­cines manda­to­ry.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Hamid Ghany yes­ter­day said the move would re­quire the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion.

“Leg­is­la­tion would have to go to Par­lia­ment that re­quires a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty be­cause it is go­ing to be an in­fringe­ment of hu­man rights,” Ghany said.

“And the nor­mal way in which leg­is­la­tion is made that in­fringes hu­man rights, is that it is passed with a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in both the Hous­es,” he said.

“I don’t know how that would play.”

Ghany said the Con­sti­tu­tion makes pro­vi­sions for Par­lia­ment to leg­is­late “in a man­ner in­con­sis­tent with hu­man rights pro­vi­sions.”

“They could bring leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment and say that they re­quire manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion and get a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty. That is chal­lenge­able in court,” Ghany said.

The chal­lenge, Ghany said, is on the ba­sis that it is not re­quired in a so­ci­ety that has a prop­er re­spect for the rights and free­doms of an in­di­vid­ual.

“A judge would have to de­ter­mine whether or not it was a rea­son­able in­fringe­ment,” he said.

Par­lia­ment is cur­rent­ly on re­cess and is ex­pect­ed to meet again in Sep­tem­ber, but Ghany said that Gov­ern­ment could use a Stand­ing Or­der to call in the mem­bers to de­bate this is­sue.

“If there is an ur­gent need, you can re­call Par­lia­ment dur­ing the re­cess to deal with that,” he said.

Ramesh: Pow­er rests with Par­lia­ment

Mean­while, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and con­sti­tu­tion­al ex­pert Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj al­so said the mat­ter would have to be dealt with in Par­lia­ment.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Ma­haraj agreed that Par­lia­ment has the pow­er to make such leg­is­la­tion.

“The ques­tion which aris­es is whether it would need a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty. I would think that it would need one be­cause it is a guar­an­teed right to choice. That is guar­an­teed in the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Ma­haraj said.

“But I think that hav­ing re­gard for the dan­ger of the virus not on­ly to in­fect an in­di­vid­ual but al­so to in­fect oth­ers, I think it would be re­gard­ed as some­thing that is rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able.”

Ma­haraj said even if it is passed by a ma­jor­i­ty, the court still had the au­thor­i­ty to strike it down.

“But I think the court would find it rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able in a so­ci­ety that has a prop­er re­spect for the rights of in­di­vid­u­als,” he said.

Ma­haraj said Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans al­so had a du­ty to the pub­lic to ex­am­ine the is­sue in a “non-par­ti­san way.”

Guardian Me­dia mes­saged the Prime Min­is­ter to de­ter­mine whether the move to make vac­cines manda­to­ry was an cur­rent­ly ac­tive dis­cus­sion but he did not re­spond.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, to as­cer­tain whether she would sup­port such leg­is­la­tion if it were brought be­fore the House, but she did not re­spond to calls or texts.