SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Vague COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions are re­sult­ing in so­ci­etal dis­cord be­cause of the per­cep­tion that the po­lice ser­vice is se­lec­tive­ly en­forc­ing them, ar­gues Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly.

The at­tor­ney-at-law un­der­scored the point in a news state­ment he is­sued to­day, re­spond­ing to the seem­ing “dif­fer­ent treat­ment” be­ing met­ed out to dif­fer­ent class­es of cit­i­zens, who have been caught breach­ing the COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions.

The Ch­agua­nas West MP ar­gues that the prob­lem is not the ex­is­tence of any in­her­ent­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ap­proach by the po­lice ser­vice, but that the root of the prob­lem is the im­pre­cise reg­u­la­tions which have been pro­mul­gat­ed by the Min­is­ter of Health.

In ad­di­tion, MP Ram­bal­ly main­tains that the de­ci­sion by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al not to have the reg­u­la­tions de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment, al­so has ex­ac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion.

He ref­er­ences a de­ci­sion made by The Supreme Court of Eng­land, which notes that vague and im­pre­cise law leads to ar­bi­trary en­force­ment. The UK Supreme Court ob­served that when law en­force­ment of­fi­cials are giv­en too wide a dis­cre­tion, there will in­evitably be a de­gree of in­con­sis­ten­cy in their en­force­ment.

“The COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions, as present­ly draft­ed, are too vague in many re­spects and al­ready prov­ing detri­men­tal to the wel­fare of the pop­u­la­tion,” MP Ram­bal­ly states. “This is not the fault of an in­di­vid­ual po­lice of­fi­cer or the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. It is the fault of leg­is­la­tors, in this case, the Min­is­ter of Health and the AG, who con­tin­ue to hold the in­de­fen­si­ble view that they need­ed no as­sis­tance from the Par­lia­ment in draft­ing these reg­u­la­tions.”

He adds: “Un­cer­tain­ty and vague­ness were the grounds for chal­leng­ing the Sedi­tion Laws. The cit­i­zen­ry has al­ready wit­nessed how the se­lec­tive en­force­ment of that ar­cha­ic law could in­fringe on their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.”

The Ch­agua­nas West MP re­it­er­ates that Par­lia­ment is the coun­try’s pre­miere de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tion that al­lows cit­i­zens to par­take in the law-mak­ing process through their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives. He points out that Par­lia­ment is an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized fil­ter for law and pol­i­cy in the gov­er­nance of T&T. He said pro­posed law, as in the case of the COVID-19 Reg­u­la­tions, is some­times crude, im­prop­er­ly ex­pressed or sim­ply not thor­ough enough.

“The read­ing of bills and Par­lia­men­tary de­bate serve to fil­ter these laws and re­fine them in­to a prod­uct that hope­ful­ly can serve our cit­i­zens in a fair and eq­ui­table man­ner. It is quite pos­si­ble that if these reg­u­la­tions were laid in Par­lia­ment,” he ar­gues, “one of my col­leagues from ei­ther side of the House may have ad­vised on the need to crys­tal­lize the law in a suf­fi­cient man­ner so as to cov­er the use of a com­mon area pool lo­cat­ed with­in a res­i­den­tial com­plex or sim­i­lar dwelling arrange­ment.”

The at­tor­ney-at-law added: “The ma­te­r­i­al ques­tion is whether or not that law is suf­fi­cient­ly pre­cise and com­pre­hen­sive enough to en­able cit­i­zens to un­der­stand what con­duct is ex­pect­ed of them, to en­able our cher­ished po­lice ser­vice to ap­ply the law in an eq­ui­table fash­ion.”