DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj says the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­voke the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) is­sued against busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve has ex­posed what he de­scribes as a “cri­sis of gov­er­nance,” rais­ing broad­er con­cerns about the coun­try’s in­sti­tu­tions, po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship and hu­man rights pro­tec­tions.

The re­vo­ca­tion of the de­ten­tion or­ders has sparked de­bate over the use of emer­gency pow­ers, with Ram­samooj ar­gu­ing that the con­tro­ver­sy ex­tends be­yond the Hadeeds and has placed key state in­sti­tu­tions un­der re­newed scruti­ny.

“What we are see­ing now, once again, is the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is in­deed ques­tioned. The of­fice of per­haps even how the Chief Jus­tice op­er­ates, how the Ju­di­cia­ry op­er­ates, demon­strates the cri­sis of gov­er­nance in our coun­try,” he said.

Ram­samooj ar­gued that the wider prob­lem lies not on­ly with elect­ed of­fi­cials but al­so with the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture that re­peat­ed­ly pro­duces them.

“So­ci­ety made a clear de­c­la­ra­tion of their will­ing­ness to sup­port poor-think­ing in­di­vid­u­als in­to gov­ern­ment. And when I say gov­ern­ment, I mean not just the ex­ist­ing gov­ern­ment, but the op­po­si­tion. Be­cause the op­po­si­tion have al­so failed mis­er­ably in pro­vid­ing al­ter­na­tive lead­er­ship that could deal with this plague of democ­ra­cy.

“On­ly be­cause of eth­nic cir­cum­stances do they (cit­i­zens) be­lieve it’s okay for my tribe to steal now.”

He al­so at­trib­uted the sit­u­a­tion sur­round­ing the Hadeeds to what he de­scribed as poor lead­er­ship and per­son­al egos with­in pub­lic of­fice.

Ram­samooj said he ex­pects ad­di­tion­al le­gal chal­lenges from peo­ple de­tained un­der PDOs, warn­ing that any in­fringe­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights could ex­pose the State to le­gal li­a­bil­i­ty.

Ram­samooj fur­ther crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as hypocrisy with­in sec­tions of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty, tak­ing aim at for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who is cur­rent­ly chal­leng­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the 2011 State of Emer­gency and the de­ten­tion of 17 peo­ple.

“When he was the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, his ac­tions re­sult­ed in the re­moval of Trinidad out of the hu­man rights frame­work. So there is a lev­el of hypocrisy that ex­ists with­in the le­gal frame­work, not based on prin­ci­ple, but based on ben­e­fi­cial in­flu­ence.”

He al­so crit­i­cised at­tor­neys who have since en­tered pol­i­tics, ac­cus­ing them of fail­ing to im­prove con­di­tions for re­mand pris­on­ers.

“It’s iron­ic that all the le­gal coun­sel who have ben­e­fit­ed fi­nan­cial­ly from pris­on­ers, and who have en­tered Par­lia­ment, have not seen it fit to have a hu­mane per­spec­tive of where peo­ple who are not guilty, are liv­ing like peo­ple who are guilty.”

Look­ing ahead, Ram­samooj said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar may face dif­fi­cult po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions if she is to re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence.

“It would be quite a chal­lenge to see if the Prime Min­is­ter has the po­lit­i­cal per­spi­cac­i­ty to do what is re­quired to re­tain trust in her lead­er­ship. We have seen in her pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, the for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al then was dis­missed un­der cer­tain cir­cum­stances. There­fore, it is al­so prob­a­ble that the present At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, as well as per­haps the line min­is­ter, would be asked to ten­der their res­ig­na­tion. Whether she has the po­lit­i­cal skillsets need­ed af­ter close to one year in of­fice, a cab­i­net reshuf­fle is in­deed a re­quire­ment to cre­ate a much more ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient gov­ern­ment.”