PM: Govt will need simple majority for revised ZOSO Bill

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Gov­ern­ment’s re­vised Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) Bill will re­turn to Par­lia­ment with amend­ments to­mor­row and will re­quire on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty to pass in the Sen­ate, rather than the three-fifths spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty that was need­ed when the leg­is­la­tion was first in­tro­duced in Jan­u­ary.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the amend­ments had al­ready been draft­ed and she in­tends to con­duct a fi­nal re­view be­fore the bill is rein­tro­duced.

“Cer­tain­ly, we have al­ready made those amend­ments. I will give it a fi­nal look lat­er to­day (yes­ter­day),” the Prime Min­is­ter said while speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

“This bill needs a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty,” she added, point­ing out that the orig­i­nal leg­is­la­tion had been tak­en “to the fur­thest us­ing the Ja­maican mod­el.”

The bill was lat­er laid in the House by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to ad­vanc­ing the leg­is­la­tion, ar­gu­ing that it is nec­es­sary to help main­tain pub­lic safe­ty as the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ends to­day.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing dif­fer­ences be­tween the con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­works of Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I think we need this. We need to have our peo­ple feel­ing safe in our coun­try.”

Un­der a sim­ple-ma­jor­i­ty re­quire­ment, a bill pass­es if it re­ceives the sup­port of more than 50 per cent of the mem­bers present and vot­ing.

The leg­is­la­tion’s first it­er­a­tion was de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate in Jan­u­ary, af­ter the Gov­ern­ment failed to se­cure the re­quired three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty. Eight of the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and all six Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment sen­a­tors vot­ed against the mea­sure.

The bill’s de­feat sparked po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­leged that two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors had sought per­son­al favours in ex­change for their sup­port. She said the re­quests were re­ject­ed but de­clined to iden­ti­fy the sen­a­tors in­volved.

The Gov­ern­ment’s re­newed push for the leg­is­la­tion comes as the cur­rent six-month SoE, de­clared in March, ends to­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the SoE as suc­cess­ful but main­tained that such ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures could not con­tin­ue in­def­i­nite­ly.

“The SoE was suc­cess­ful, but we can­not do per­pet­u­al SoEs,” she said.

She ar­gued, how­ev­er, that the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion would pro­vide an­oth­er tool in the fight against crime and help re­as­sure cit­i­zens about their safe­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to con­sid­er con­cerns raised by Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and make fur­ther ad­just­ments if nec­es­sary.

“We will pass it in the House. We will pass it in the Sen­ate. We will lis­ten to the Op­po­si­tion. We will lis­ten to the in­de­pen­dents, and if we have to dove­tail it in cer­tain ways, we will do that,” the PM said.

“But I re­al­ly want us to pass it, and I want the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to un­der­stand that safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is first.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that pub­lic safe­ty must re­main Gov­ern­ment’s top pri­or­i­ty, ar­gu­ing cit­i­zens can­not ben­e­fit from na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment if they do not feel se­cure.

“Be­cause if you’re dead, you can­not en­joy good roads, you can­not en­joy schools, you can en­joy noth­ing else. So, I’m putting safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty at the top of our list,” she said.

Op­po­si­tion MP Symon de No­bri­ga says the Op­po­si­tion has not yet de­ter­mined whether it will sup­port the re­vised leg­is­la­tion. He said Op­po­si­tion mem­bers can­not take a po­si­tion on the bill un­til they have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view the pro­posed amend­ments.

“Well, the fact is that no mem­ber of the Op­po­si­tion can give you a po­si­tion on that, hav­ing not seen the bill. It was just an­nounced at our last sit­ting, so we have not seen that,” he said.

De No­bri­ga not­ed that con­cerns about the orig­i­nal leg­is­la­tion ex­tend­ed be­yond the Op­po­si­tion, with In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors al­so rais­ing what he de­scribed as sig­nif­i­cant is­sues. He said Gov­ern­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed it would not ac­cept amend­ments, a stance he sug­gest­ed con­tributed to the bill’s de­feat.

“So, we will see what comes to the Par­lia­ment, and we’ll see if it’s palat­able for the na­tion,” he said.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les had pre­vi­ous­ly crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­vive the leg­is­la­tion, de­scrib­ing the orig­i­nal bill as “failed and com­pro­mised.”

Beck­les ar­gued that bring­ing back the mea­sure as the SoE nears its end rais­es ques­tions about whether the Gov­ern­ment has a broad­er and more ef­fec­tive long-term strat­e­gy to ad­dress crime.

She al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ab­sence from the par­lia­men­tary sit­ting last Fri­day, dur­ing which Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der an­nounced the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to rein­tro­duce the leg­is­la­tion.

Alexan­der told Par­lia­ment the bill is in­tend­ed to pro­vide “spe­cial mea­sures to up­hold the rule of law, pub­lic or­der, cit­i­zens’ se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic safe­ty” with­in ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly de­fined ar­eas.

He said the tim­ing of its re­turn would be de­ter­mined by the Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

“When the ZOSO is ready, they will in­di­cate to us and we’ll bring it be­fore the Ho­n­ourable House,” Alexan­der said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so high­light­ed Gov­ern­ment’s co­op­er­a­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners in com­bat­ing transna­tion­al crime.

Asked about the seizure of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion worth of il­le­gal drugs since the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice and whether Unit­ed States of­fi­cials were as­sist­ing lo­cal law en­force­ment, she said T&T works close­ly with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing and hu­man traf­fick­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “We work with our lo­cal law en­force­ment. We work with the US and oth­er gov­ern­ments when it comes to fight­ing in­ter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing, peo­ple traf­fick­ing and hu­man traf­fick­ing. We work with all our re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to­geth­er with our own law en­force­ment.”