PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves Monday urged Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries to use the death penalty as a deterrent to murders, saying they should not be afraid of the European Union (EU) withholding financial assistance to the region as a result.
In 1983, the Council of Europe adopted the first legally binding instrument providing for the unconditional abolition of the death penalty in peacetime, which is Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). All 46 member states currently ratify this text.
Germany, for example, is against capital punishment under any circumstances and, together with partners worldwide, is resolutely campaigning for its abolition.
Gonsalves, a Roman Catholic, who said both his mother and the Pope were wrong in denouncing the death penalty as a deterrent to murder, insisted that it should be used for murder.
“I know the Europeans do not like that. They had it for a long time, and they may not want to give aid to bring it back, and so on.
“But I am a satisfied being of a legal practitioner for many years that most of the people who make killings are cowards. Never mind this macho thing which they present. They are absolute cowards,” Gonsalves told a roundtable discussion involving other CARICM leaders on the opening day of the two-day regional symposium on “Violence as a Public Health Issue-The Crime Challenge” hosted by the Trinidad and Tobago government.
“If we have that as a particular option in the punishment schedule for the courts not to make it very well near impossible to carry out the death penalty. What I am talking here people in the taverns across Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados and so on are talking these things”.
Gonsalves also noted that “too many judges and magistrates are too soft. Sometimes you get the impression that some magistrates, depending on who the lawyer is, people seem to get better treatment. Everybody talks about this you. Still, they talk about it behind closed doors,” said Gonsalves, a lawyer.
“You don’t hear it from a prime minister. Well, let us begin to talk about these things too. He added that these matters touch and concern how we will address this question(of crime and violence).
Gonsalves, the longest-serving head of government in the 15-member regional integration movement, said Caribbean countries have “put a lot of resources into the police, into crime fighting, into the judiciary…and more money ought to be put as we have to do some of the things regionally and we have to update our laws making sure that when we update, our rules (they) are reasonably required…and justifiable in a democratic society.
“I am not calling for any totalitarian measure. I am not calling for that. But there is in aspects of our judiciary a creeping lack of awareness about some of the problems we face.
“How can you give somebody who is charged with murder bail? Let’s be serious. How can you do that,” Gonsalves asked, adding, “Where do those judges live, on Mars?
He said he hoped the symposium would be the stepping stone for establishing a comprehensive set of packages to deal with the crime situation. He also hopes for “an action plan with things which we can do regionally, something we must do nationally.
“We have a common position on what we can do nationally so that we can get rid of a lot of the opportunism which we get in dealing with the issue of crime.”
Gonsalves told the round table discussion he does not accept the argument that the causes of violent crime “reside in the economistic sphere.
“I don’t accept that at all. If that were the reason or the main reason we would have had more murders or more violent crimes in the 1990s, 1930s, 40s, and 50s coming up when you have far more opportunities today and less poverty today, and greater wealth today than you had in the 1930s and 1940s.”
He said also he did not think that people kill one another because they are frustrated, adding, “If you are frustrated with life or living, you will kill yourself, and I note …in all the countries of the Caribbean with the possible exception of Guyana we have among the lowest rate of thousand persons for suicide.
“So if you are frustrated, we should be killing ourselves more, individually, commit suicide, we don’t kill other people,” he said, adding many different answers to people committing murders.
He said young males commit the most severe and violent crimes, most coming from broken homes or dysfunctional homes. He said these young people are school dropouts or have failed to take advantage of the opportunities to equip themselves for better survival.
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