Rowley: Govt drunk with power; dividing country in crime fight

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

Akash.sama­[email protected]

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment is “drunk with pow­er,” ac­cus­ing it of try­ing to in­tim­i­date In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors while pur­su­ing crime-fight­ing poli­cies he says are di­vid­ing the coun­try.

Row­ley made the ac­cu­sa­tions in a state­ment on so­cial me­dia ti­tled “When Pow­er Cor­rupts,” as he con­demned Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sus­tained crit­i­cism of the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors fol­low­ing their re­jec­tion of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill.

The for­mer prime min­is­ter said the at­tacks on the In­de­pen­dent Bench were not sim­ply po­lit­i­cal crit­i­cism, but rep­re­sent­ed an at­tempt to weak­en a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly es­tab­lished part of Par­lia­ment.

“This un­war­rant­ed, sus­tained, vul­gar at­tack on the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors is to be con­demned in the strongest of terms,” Row­ley said.

He ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions amount­ed to telling the coun­try that it was un­will­ing to be con­strained by the “let­ter and spir­it” of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Row­ley said all of­fice hold­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Prime Min­is­ter, were re­quired by their oath of of­fice to ex­er­cise their au­thor­i­ty with­in the con­fines of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to “neuter, fright­en and ren­der in­ef­fec­tive” the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors’ in­volve­ment in the work of Par­lia­ment, de­scrib­ing it as “the worst form of sub­lim­i­nal pow­er grab­bing.”

His state­ment fol­lows Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­peat­ed crit­i­cism of the In­de­pen­dent Bench af­ter all nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors joined the six Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors in vot­ing against the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill in the Sen­ate.

The re­sult­ing 15-15 tie was even­tu­al­ly bro­ken by Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark’s cast­ing vote, al­low­ing the leg­is­la­tion to pass.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sub­se­quent­ly de­scribed the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors as “sa­tan­ic,” “demons” and “scum­bags” over their re­jec­tion of the leg­is­la­tion.

She has since in­ten­si­fied that crit­i­cism, telling Guardian Me­dia that her Gov­ern­ment would not ac­cept an­oth­er amend­ment from the nine In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and re­fer­ring to them as “lu­cifer­ian mon­sters.”

Row­ley said the Prime Min­is­ter ap­peared ir­ri­tat­ed by hav­ing her poli­cies ques­tioned or op­posed, ar­gu­ing that such scruti­ny was part of the con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem.

He said while there should be broad sup­port for le­git­i­mate mea­sures to tack­le vi­o­lent crime, that ob­jec­tive could not be used to jus­ti­fy what he de­scribed as gov­ern­men­tal over­reach.

“No right think­ing cit­i­zen will dis­agree with the Gov­ern­ment mak­ing every rea­son­able and vi­sion­ary ef­fort to re­spond to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments that prey on the na­tion,” Row­ley said.

But he added that the fight against crime “can­not jus­ti­fy the abuse of pow­er, con­sti­tu­tion­al side­step­ping and gov­ern­men­tal over­reach.”

Row­ley al­so turned his at­ten­tion to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ap­proach to im­ple­ment­ing the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter re­cent­ly said Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions would be al­lowed in Gov­ern­ment-con­trolled con­stituen­cies and lo­cal gov­ern­ment dis­tricts, as well as To­ba­go, while PNM-con­trolled ar­eas would be ex­clud­ed if their rep­re­sen­ta­tives did not want the mea­sures.

Row­ley ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of em­bark­ing on what he called “racial, eth­nic and ge­o­graph­i­cal sep­a­ra­tions with­in the coun­try.”

He warned that at­tempt­ing to fight crime by sep­a­rat­ing the coun­try in­to what he de­scribed as “we and them” could deep­en di­vi­sions rather than make com­mu­ni­ties safer.

The for­mer prime min­is­ter de­scribed that ap­proach as an “in­cip­i­ent In­desh pol­i­cy,” say­ing cit­i­zens should be con­cerned about where it could lead.

“It is fool­ish to think that on these lit­tle is­lands we can bar­ri­cade and de­mo­nize one group or area so as to bring safe­ty and Nir­vana to an­oth­er,” Row­ley said.

He ar­gued that crime could not be ef­fec­tive­ly con­front­ed ac­cord­ing to po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cies, com­mu­ni­ties or oth­er di­vi­sions, and called in­stead for a col­lec­tive na­tion­al re­sponse.

“We ei­ther fight crime to­geth­er and win or the crim­i­nals will win by our ac­tions of tear­ing our­selves apart,” Row­ley said.

“We have been warned.”