Cops may fly the gate
Published:Wednesday | July 21, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Edmond Campbell, Senior Staff Reporter
LEGAL LUMINARIES have said scores of persons now being held under the current state of emergency may have to be released when it expires on Thursday.
This is because a parliamentary vote to extend the extraordinary measure was defeated yesterday in Gordon House because of inadequate Government numbers and an Opposition which abstained.
At the same time, at least two senior legal minds are describing as disgraceful and shabby what appeared to be the seeming unpreparedness of lawmakers as they voted yesterday on a critical motion to extend the limited state of emergency.
Respected attorney-at-law Frank Phipps, QC, said yesterday's developments in the Lower House were a "sad reflection on the Parliament of the country which does not take the business of the people seriously. Something like a state of emergency, you can't get enough people in Parliament to vote for or against? It's disgraceful and a disservice to the people of the country."
Asked what the security forces would do with the large number of persons currently being detained under emergency powers, Phipps commented: "My impression is that they would have to be released."
K.D. Knight, a former justice minister and minister of national security, said his preliminary view was that those being held in detention by the security forces would have to be released unless charged and denied bail.
He said at the end of the current limited state of emergency, which now covers the Corporate Area and St Catherine, the authority for holding persons in detention would have expired.
Knight pointed out that under normal situations, the minister of national security had no power to detain people and confine them to particular areas.
President of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), Joseph M. Matalon, said he was disappointed with the outcome of the parliamentary vote.
Matalon told The Gleaner that the security forces had stressed that the limited state of emergency was a necessary part of their toolkit.
"It is on that basis that we have supported it, and we would certainly continue to support it, and I am very disappointed to learn that a motion to extend it has been defeated," he said.