DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

There will be no gun amnesty in the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE). This was con­firmed by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in a let­ter sent to at­tor­ney Dayadai Har­ri­paul yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Last week, Har­ri­paul, through her lawyer Ger­ald Ramdeen, sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion over Reg­u­la­tion 11 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions 2024.

The reg­u­la­tion states, “No per­son who sur­ren­ders any firearm, am­mu­ni­tion or ex­plo­sive dur­ing any pe­ri­od that is pre­scribed, and oth­er­wise in ac­cor­dance with an Or­der to sur­ren­der, shall be pros­e­cut­ed un­der the Firearms Act or reg­u­la­tion for il­le­gal­ly pur­chas­ing, ac­quir­ing or pos­sess­ing such firearm, am­mu­ni­tion or ex­plo­sive pri­or to the time of such sur­ren­der or at that time.”

Ramdeen claimed that the pro­vi­sion was un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al as it in­ter­fered with the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions’ (DPP) ex­clu­sive purview over crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions.

Re­spond­ing to the le­gal threat, Cham­bers Di­rec­tor of the AG’s Sec­re­tari­at Solange De Souza asked Ramdeen for a week in which to of­fi­cial­ly re­spond but point­ed out that the reg­u­la­tion has no cur­rent ef­fect. She al­so not­ed that the pe­ri­od would not be pre­scribed in the next week be­fore he re­ceives the of­fi­cial re­sponse to the le­gal threat.

How­ev­er, in a fol­low-up let­ter yes­ter­day morn­ing, De Souza con­firmed that the pro­vi­sion would be dis­con­tin­ued be­fore even tak­ing ef­fect. “The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has ad­vised the Cab­i­net that Reg­u­la­tion 11, though not op­er­a­tionalised, should in any event be re­moved from the reg­u­la­tions, and this is ex­pect­ed to be ap­proved this week and to take ef­fect with­in the next four days,” De Souza said.

She al­so not­ed that sim­i­lar pro­vi­sions were con­tained in reg­u­la­tions for pe­ri­ods of pub­lic emer­gency de­clared in 1990 and 2011.

On Mon­day night, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ap­proved a three-month ex­ten­sion of the SoE af­ter a de­bate by Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion MPs. Af­ter the pe­ri­od ends, the SoE can be ex­tend­ed for a fur­ther three months.

How­ev­er, while the ini­tial ex­ten­sion on­ly re­quired a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, a fur­ther ex­ten­sion would re­quire a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote in both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate. An SoE can­not last more than six months.