DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Se­nior Coun­sel Avory Sinanan has rec­om­mend­ed that the Gov­ern­ment make a re­newed ap­peal to the pub­lic for its sup­port to make bail amend­ment leg­is­la­tion a re­al­i­ty. The call came as he con­demned the Gov­ern­ment for wel­com­ing for­eign­ers who have since be­come in­volved in se­ri­ous crimes across the coun­try.

Sinanan made the com­ment dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, in re­sponse to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds’ com­plaint that bail was too eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble for cer­tain of­fend­ers, name­ly for­eign na­tion­als in­volved in the traf­fick­ing of syn­thet­ic drugs.

Hinds was re­fer­ring to the dis­cov­ery of a metham­phet­a­mine lab at The Res­i­dences, San Fer­nan­do, in ear­ly Au­gust and im­plied that the Chi­nese sus­pect may have fled the coun­try af­ter ac­quir­ing bail. He al­so claimed this has de­mor­alised the po­lice.

How­ev­er, Sinanan said bail was one of the cor­ner­stones of democ­ra­cy and the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of cit­i­zens. Nev­er­the­less, he said he sym­pa­thised with the min­is­ter’s con­cerns, as crime was out of con­trol.

“I think hav­ing re­gard to the lev­el of crime that we have in the coun­try, that, yes, the bail laws ought to be strength­ened. Cer­tain of­fences—nar­cotics, mur­der and so on—need to be looked at and rob­bery and rape and all that sort of thing need to be looked at and you have to go back to the draw­ing board as it were,” Sinanan said.

He added that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion ought to en­gage the pub­lic on the mat­ter to chart the way for­ward.

“You have to en­gage in a cer­tain mea­sure of so­cial en­gi­neer­ing and you have to say well, lis­ten, look ... yes bail is a con­sti­tu­tion­al right, as it stands, of a cit­i­zen or an in­di­vid­ual, but giv­en the lev­el of crime ... our slide in so­ci­etal norms and re­spect for the rule of law ... if nec­es­sary, take the bull by the horns, let Par­lia­ment in­ter­vene, amend the Con­sti­tu­tion and put oth­er leg­is­la­tion in place,” he said.

Sinanan did, how­ev­er, take is­sue with the Gov­ern­ment al­low­ing for­eign na­tion­als in­to the coun­try with­out, what he said, were strin­gent back­ground checks. He said many of these in­di­vid­u­als who have found them­selves charged in con­nec­tion with drug and gun crimes have cre­at­ed new crim­i­nal net­works lo­cal­ly. He sug­gest­ed that the State should, there­fore, take some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for po­lice be­com­ing dis­en­fran­chised.

“The Min­is­ter can’t throw his hands up in the air and say ‘well, you know, the po­lice ser­vice is be­com­ing de­mor­alised’ and so on. Be­cause in the first place, you have opened the flood gates and al­lowed Venezue­lan na­tion­als or for­eign­ers to come in, par­tic­u­lar­ly Venezue­lan na­tion­als and Chi­nese, and you don’t vet them! You do not know the char­ac­ter of these peo­ple,” he said.

How­ev­er, re­spond­ing to Sinanan’s com­ments fol­low­ing the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the As­sess­ment Cen­tre and Tem­po­rary Hous­ing Fa­cil­i­ty for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Hinds in­sin­u­at­ed the at­tor­ney was a UNC agent.

The Op­po­si­tion has been blamed by Hinds and oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters for hold­ing up the bail bill.

“Tell him that we had it, and when we went to re­fur­bish it in the Par­lia­ment, the par­ty that I sus­pect he sup­ports, re­fused to sup­port it,” Hinds said.

How­ev­er, an at­tempt to ask him about un­vet­ted for­eign­ers was cut short.

“Tell him we have looked in­ward­ly a thou­sand times but the minute we look across the par­lia­ment floor, we see peo­ple who have a record, who have a his­to­ry of sup­port­ing ‘wrong­tous­ness’ over right­eous­ness and seem to be more will­ing to sup­port those who of­fend the so­ci­ety than to be con­cerned about the so­ci­ety that they should be pro­tect­ing,” Hinds said.

But Sinanan de­nied hav­ing a par­ty card and ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment in Hinds’ re­sponse.

Ef­forts to con­tact Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and Po­lice So­cial Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son on the mat­ter were un­suc­cess­ful, as they did not an­swer their cell­phones.