By Devant Maharaj
I wish to highlight the bungling incompetence of the government and attorney general Faris Al Rawi that has resulted in the hasty amendment to the law, in what was an obscene and naked attempt to give belated legal authority to the chief medical officer (CMO) to authorize the detention and quarantining of persons who tested positive for COVID-19.
It is public knowledge that the government has been detaining and quarantining two categories of persons whom they wish to test for COVID 19: (1) persons who have travelled abroad and re-entered the country (incoming persons) and (2) persons who did not leave the country (local persons).
Whilst regulations were made under the Quarantine Act to authorize the detention and quarantining of incoming persons, no regulations were made to give the government the legal power to detain and quarantine local persons.
The ministry of health has been issuing quarantine orders against local persons when it had no legal authority to do so. Both attorney general Al Rawi and minister of health Terrence Deyalsigh completely missed the elementary and basic point that the Quarantine Act applies to incoming persons only and that it could not and did not provide any legal basis for detaining and quarantining of local persons.
[Today], after cases were filed, the government hurriedly scampered to pass yet another Regulation (No 10) by which it has finally given the CMO the power to detain and quarantine local persons. This amendment to the regulations is not retroactive and hence all local persons who were quarantined and detained would now be able to bring claims against the state for the illegal deprivation of their liberty.
It is difficult to understand this mind-boggling level of incompetence on the part of the attorney general and the minister of health.
This was a basic and elementary point and they must account to the population for this serious blunder that has opened up the state to an avalanche of litigation for the breach of citizens’ constitutional rights. No amount of name-calling and personal attacks can hide the glaring shortcomings and failure of the attorney general regarding the deficiencies in the laws passed to deal with this crisis.
Citizens have made strident calls for the government to ensure that the necessary laws are passed so that the rights of citizens are not railroaded and trampled upon. The piecemeal manner in which the government has approached this COVID-19 pandemic shows that there is a crisis of competence in the Keith Rowley-led Peoples National Movement (PNM) administration.
The attorney general is famous for his legal blunders and bungling, but this represents a new level of ineptitude. The constitution is the supreme law of the land.
We will not allow the government to sacrifice the constitutional rights of the people on the altar of political expediency. The disrespect to the rule of law paves the way for dictatorship and further erosion of our fundamental human rights, and the government must be held to account for its legal transgressions.
Devant Maharaj is a leading member of the United National Congress (UNC) and a social activist.
