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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Stakeholders to PM on mandatory vaccination: You are no one-man show

by

BOBIE-LEE DIXON
1317 days ago
20210716

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

“This is a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state and chang­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al law that will in­fringe on the hu­man rights of peo­ple, is not a de­ci­sion left in your hands.”

Those were the words yes­ter­day of stake­hold­ers to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in re­sponse to his sug­ges­tion that Gov­ern­ment may make vac­cines manda­to­ry if a more vir­u­lent strain of COVID-19 hits T&T.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, at­tor­ney Bri­an Baig said,“This can’t hap­pen. We are still a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try; we are still a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state. We must nev­er for­get that we have had coun­tries in the world that tram­pled on the rights of cit­i­zens. And we can­not op­er­ate like them. We are still a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic na­tion with an elect­ed gov­ern­ment. We have a democ­ra­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This is not a dic­ta­tor­ship.”

Cur­rent­ly, France has tak­en a po­si­tion to make vac­ci­na­tion manda­to­ry on­ly for health­care work­ers. A Hous­ton Chron­i­cle ar­ti­cle dat­ed June 22 al­so said over 150 health­care work­ers at the Hous­ton Methodist Bay­town Hos­pi­tal were ei­ther fired while oth­ers re­signed over the hos­pi­tal’s re­cent pol­i­cy man­dat­ing vac­ci­na­tion.

Agree­ing that vac­ci­na­tions were im­por­tant, Baig said at the same time, the Gov­ern­ment should nev­er use its of­fice or pow­er to tram­ple on the civ­il lib­er­ties of so­ci­ety.

“Per­sons should still be giv­en the right to choose. And where do we go from here? If a per­son choos­es to not take the vac­cine, are we go­ing to have to la­bel them as un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple, as what was done in Ger­many, where the Jews were made to walk around with the sign on their arms?”

Baig said in­stead of the Gov­ern­ment’s big stick ap­proach with its Vac­ci­nate to Op­er­ate pol­i­cy, it should seek to do con­sul­ta­tions with the pub­lic, as fear was now grip­ping cit­i­zens who are wor­ried about be­com­ing un­em­ployed if they are not vac­ci­nat­ed.

“The Gov­ern­ment should think long and hard about this. What are you go­ing to do, put peo­ple on the bread­line be­cause they did not take a vac­cine? This is wrong, you can’t do that!” he said.

Baig said mak­ing the vac­cine manda­to­ry would al­so in­fringe on oth­er rights such as med­ical con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and even one’s right to live.

“Imag­ine a per­son who has a med­ical con­di­tion that pre­vents them from tak­ing the vac­cine. What hap­pens there? Are they go­ing to have to walk with a let­ter every­where they go say­ing what’s wrong with them, even if that health is­sue is a very pri­vate one? More im­por­tant­ly, if a per­son is forced to take a vac­cine and some­thing hap­pens to them and they fall ill be­cause of this vac­cine, who are we hold­ing li­able af­ter that af­ter you force them? he asked.

An­oth­er lawyer who spoke anony­mous­ly with Guardian Me­dia, said for such a law to be made manda­to­ry, it would take con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and even that was no ready-made process, as cre­at­ing or pass­ing a law that would al­ter or breach the hu­man rights of cit­i­zens would re­quire a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in both hous­es of the Par­lia­ment.

“That re­quires a mo­tion to be filed, a bill to be tabled and a de­bate, show­ing all the sci­en­tif­ic facts and all the proven and un-proven facts, and so on. So it’s not an overnight thing,” the lawyer ex­plained.

But at­tor­neys Jonathan Bha­gan and Aidan Chin Ale­ong said while manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tions would gen­er­al­ly vi­o­late sec­tion 4 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, with a State of Emer­gency (SoE) still in­tact, Row­ley’s brave state­ment could mean plans to use Sec­tions 6, 7, and 13 of the Con­sti­tu­tion to jus­ti­fy in this in­stance, ex­cep­tions to the law that speak to the hu­man rights and free­doms of cit­i­zens in Sec­tions 4 and 5.

They were spot on, as in a so­cial me­dia post late yes­ter­day, at­tor­ney and ex-Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Lar­ry Lal­la, af­ter ex­plain­ing that un­der the Pub­lic Health Act vac­ci­na­tions have been a norm from the pre-school stage, wrote: “It should not be dif­fi­cult, bear­ing in mind that we are in a pan­dem­ic and the Gov­ern­ment has wide pow­ers un­der the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance to act to pro­tect the pub­lic against COVID-19.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment can add COVID-19 to that list and make vac­ci­na­tion manda­to­ry “for our pres­ence at work­places and pub­lic build­ings et cetera.”

Re­spond­ing to Lal­la’s com­ment, Ale­ong warned that this “loop­hole” for the Gov­ern­ment to flex its pow­er can open a dan­ger­ous can of worms.

“I be­lieve that it will open a can of worms, snakes and oth­er un­de­sir­ables, be­cause those who sac­ri­fice free­dom for the sake of safe­ty will have nei­ther. It would re­duce our Con­sti­tu­tion to a se­ries of le­gal ob­sta­cles for which any ap­par­ent emer­gency can be ex­ploit­ed to ma­nip­u­late it,” he ex­plained.

Mean­while, one trade union and a po­lit­i­cal par­ty have made their stance clear.

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), in a state­ment, said, “Our po­si­tion is that whilst we ad­vise our mem­bers to ac­cess the vac­cine, we are ve­he­ment­ly op­posed to manda­to­ry vac­ci­na­tion in all forms for any rea­son.”

Stat­ing that Row­ley’s Vac­ci­nate to Op­er­ate pol­i­cy was ill-ad­vised, the leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah said, “It must be stat­ed that there is no law that makes it com­pul­so­ry for a per­son to be vac­ci­nat­ed. To force a work­er to be vac­ci­nat­ed is, in our view, al­so il­le­gal.”


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