Police Minister comments on Special Prosecutor Bill

Minister Musa also weighed in on a Bill that was introduced in the House of Representatives by his ministry but later sent back to the Cabinet by the Senate. On Monday, the Special Prosecutor Bill, which proposes to amend the laws to allow the Attorney General to make instructions for revisions of the laws on an interim basis, received pushback from the Opposition and independent Senators, who referred to it as being unconstitutional. The bill was proposed after the triple murder of brothers, David and Jon Ramnarace and Jon’s wife, Vivian Ramnarace. The main suspect in that incident is Elmer Nah who is the nephew of DPP’s husband Marco Vidal. Musa says the bill was only drafted to ensure there was no room for bias and says he understands why it was sent back. 

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs and New Growth Industries:  “That was the recommendation of the attorney general. I am totally guided by her as well as her ministry in terms of what is the proper procedure in a situation like this. I don’t think we’ve ever had a situation where there was a familial tie or a familial bias and so we wanted to remove that bias. There is still provision, Jules, for us to have a private prosecutor appointed that would fall under the DPPs remit and so she can issue a writ in order for the private prosecutor to now carry out conduct of the case. So that is going to happen. Whether we revise a special prosecutor bill that is something to be decided. We don’t have a lot of time, but we do have a mechanism that currently exists under our constitution that allows the DPP to appoint that private prosecutor. So it’s not stillborn. It was the attorney general putting in place mechanisms to remove that perception or appearance of bias because we know that there is no bias on the part of the DPP but we still want it to remove any perception of such.”