Minutes after Trinidad and Tobago House Speaker Wade Mark announced the government’s death penalty bill had “failed”, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said the population would “hang the PNM” for not supporting the legislation.
The bill required a special three-quarters majority to be passed, which the government did not have.
The Trinidad Guardian reported that it was the first major legislative defeat for the nine-month old People’s Partnership (PP) government. All 11 opposition People’s National Movement (PNM) MPs voted against the measure when the vote was taken shortly before 3 pm. Point Fortin MP and former foreign affairs minister, Paula Gopee-Scoon was absent.
“This will be a very short sitting,” opposition leader Keith Rowley said, as he made his way to the chamber, shortly before the scheduled 1.30 start. It ended just over an hour later.
Persad-Bissessar assembled most of her 29 MPs in a committee room for a news conference.
“The PNM voted against hangings today,” she began. The prime minister said the opposition kept shifting the “goalposts” during the debate and was never going for the Bill, which was introduced to allow the State to resume hanging. She added that the PNM strategy was deliberate. It was flawed and intentional, she said.
Meanwhile, according to BBC Caribbean Report, Kamla Perad-Bissessar has vowed to keep up the pressure on criminals.
Although, losing the critical death penalty vote on Monday, .she said that does not mean she’ll be giving up the fight against crime.
