The National Assembly yesterday passed the Kidnapping Bill by a 56-0 margin after a vigorous debate about the government’s addition of a clause that was not in the original bill which made the indictable offences created non-bailable save for exceptional circumstances proven to the satisfaction of the court.
The bill also benefited from amendments suggested by the parliamentary opposition and proposed in the government’s name, which removed the provisions that persons convicted for the summary offences of wrongful confinement and wrongful restraint should be imprisoned as well as fined. The amendments now provide for a person convicted for wrongful restraint to be fined not more than a $100,000 and a person convicted for wrongful confinement to be fined not more than $250,000.
Because of these amendments, Home Affairs Minister, Ronald Gajraj said it was necessary to add the clause making the indictable offences created by the bill non-bailable.
Another amendment provides for a person found guilty of knowingly negotiating to obtain a ransom for the release of a person who has been wrongfully confined to be liable to a fine of $1M and imprisonment for a term not exceeding twenty years.
Speakers from all the parliamentary parties supported the necessity of the legislation to address the new phenomenon of kidnapping which has surfaced as part of a violent crime wave.
Among speakers from the government benches were Gajraj who piloted the bill through all its stages, Attorney-General Doodnauth Singh, Khemraj Ramjattan, who failed in his attempt to convince the opposition members that there was no hidden agenda behind Clause 15 and Bernard De Santos, whose experience at the criminal bar allowed him to offer an acceptable explanation of the arcane phraseology used in the new clause denying bail for the indictable offences created.
Among the opposition speakers were the PNCR’s Deborah Backer whose use of a case argued by Singh stimulated his presentation, PNCR MP Raphael Trotman who put into context the introduction of the legislation and ROAR MP Ravi Dev.
GAP/WPA MPs Sheila Holder and Shirley Melville both expressed reservations about the new clause while PNCR MPs James McAllister and Winston Murray address-ed the impression that the government speakers thought the PNCR was not fully supportive of the bill and accused the government of attempting to substitute government dictat for judicial discretion in the clause they were seeking to add to the bill.
Introducing the bill for its Second Reading, Gajraj said that it was one of the legislative measures taken by the government to address the crime wave that has engulfed the society for the past fifteen months. But he stressed that in addition to the legislation there was need not only for penetrative policing but effective enforcement of existing laws and assistance from the public. De Santos said that Article 32 of the constitution imposed a burden on every citizen to combat and prevent crime and safeguard public property.
Backer, while supporting the bill in principle, could not support the erosion of the right of a person to be admitted to bail, citing the argument of the Attorney-General when as a member of the private bar he argued the case of Compton English who had been denied bail. She contended that the offending provision sought to erode the presumption of innocence to which an accused person was entitled. Gajraj in winding up the debate referred Backer to provisions of the legislation already enforced that prohibit a magistrate from granting bail for certain offences. He argued too that the provision was in line with those denying bail under the 1989 Narcotics Act. Murray earlier had rejected this contention essayed by other government speakers, pointing out that the 1989 legislation reflected the mood at the time both locally and internationally. However, he noted that the world had moved on since, citing the case of former Miss Guyana, Mia Rahaman, who was granted bail in a narcotics-related case in Canada recently.
About the phraseology of the clause that the government wanted added to the bill at his suggestion, and which Backer said was lifted from the Trinidad legislation, the Attorney-General pointed out that it followed dicta established since 1943. He defended the bill as having been crafted after a review of existing legislation in India, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica and adapting them to the local environment.