Independent senators adamant: No support for ZOSO without amendments

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are stand­ing firm on their de­ci­sion to re­ject the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, in­sist­ing their sup­port would on­ly be giv­en if cru­cial amend­ments are un­der­tak­en.

Se­nior coun­sels An­tho­ny Vieira and Michael de la Bastide, as well as Dr De­siree Mur­ray, made their po­si­tions clear while speak­ing out­side the Red House ahead of the Sen­ate ses­sion yes­ter­day.

In sep­a­rate in­ter­views, the three in­de­pen­dents told Guardian Me­dia they sup­port ZOSO in prin­ci­ple, but they re­main adamant that Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er their amend­ments if they plan to rein­tro­duce the leg­is­la­tion.

One such rec­om­men­da­tion was a sun­set clause, which De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge dis­missed as a non-is­sue dur­ing a re­cent tele­vi­sion in­ter­view. Sturge in­di­cat­ed that the leg­is­la­tion would be re­viewed no lat­er than three years af­ter the date of de­c­la­ra­tion of the first Zone. How­ev­er, de la Bastide said this was not suf­fi­cient.

“That is not a sun­set clause, okay. That does not bring the leg­is­la­tion to an end. That clause pro­vid­ed for a re­view... So, there was no com­mit­ment to bring­ing the act to an end, so that is not a sun­set clause.”

He added that the sun­set clause is non-ne­go­tiable.

“My po­si­tion stands as it per­tains to the im­por­tant amend­ment of the sun­set clause, some kind of sun­set clause that would bring the leg­is­la­tion to an end, as it were—maybe af­ter three, four years. Un­less, be­cause if we don’t have that, then what we are say­ing is that we can’t con­trol the crime prob­lem un­less we have a kind of state of emer­gency sit­u­a­tion per­ma­nent­ly. And I don’t think we should con­cede that as yet.”

Ques­tions about the ZOSO’s pos­si­ble rein­tro­duc­tion to Par­lia­ment arose as mur­ders con­tin­ued de­spite the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency.

Vieira agreed that the Gov­ern­ment could ob­tain his sup­port in the fu­ture should they con­sid­er pro­posed amend­ments.

“I have some con­cerns about ZOSO and the way it was brought. But in prin­ci­ple, as I had in­di­cat­ed, I would sup­port it once those con­cerns were ad­dressed.”

How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment should not use the emer­gency pow­ers as its main crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.

“The prob­lem with an SoE is that it re­al­ly should be used for emer­gency sit­u­a­tions. It’s re­al­ly not ac­cept­able to have a pro­longed state of emer­gency as a crime-fight­ing mea­sure. We have to be care­ful about creep on the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of cit­i­zens. And when you get ac­cus­tomed to hav­ing those rights sus­pend­ed, I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

Mean­while, Mur­ray said she con­sid­ered sup­port­ing ZOSO the first time it was in­tro­duced, but re­called the Gov­ern­ment’s re­fusal to ac­cept amend­ments. She said she will scru­ti­nise any new leg­is­la­tion that is pro­posed by the Gov­ern­ment be­fore tak­ing a de­fin­i­tive po­si­tion.

While both Mur­ray and de la Bastide de­clined to pub­licly de­clare their views on the pos­si­ble im­po­si­tion of a cur­few to fur­ther quell vi­o­lent crimes, Vieira out­right­ly re­ject­ed it.

“You need a mix of both hard and soft mea­sures,” he said, adding, “com­ing down with the big stick is not the on­ly way of treat­ing with crime. It in­volves ed­u­ca­tion, it in­volves so­cial nets. There’s a whole raft of things that need to be done.”

The ZOSO bill col­lapsed in the Up­per House on Jan­u­ary 26 with 15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors vot­ing in its favour and 14 against, in­clud­ing six Op­po­si­tion and eight In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. Court­ney Mc Nish was the sole in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor to ab­stain.

The bill re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty to be passed.

Dur­ing the de­bate on the SoE ex­ten­sion ear­li­er this month, the De­fence Min­is­ter in­sist­ed ZOSO would be rein­tro­duced to par­lia­ment and passed, with or with­out op­po­si­tion sup­port.