By Alicia Chamely

THE Government wanted the Law Reform (Zones of Special Operations) Special Security and Community Development 2026 Bill to fail, because they knew it was unconstitutional, says Opposition Senator Faris Al-Rawi.

Speaking on the collapse of the Bill and the amendments put forward by both Opposition and Independent Senators at an Opposition press conference on Wednesday, Al-Rawi said, “The government, I believe, really wanted this law to fail because they knew it was unconstitutional.”

“They refused to accept amendments, and their intention will be to blame the Opposition and the Independents for the lack of passage of the law when crime starts to escalate,” he said, “So, I want to mark the spot today on behalf of the Opposition—look to the amendments that we put forward. You will see how we intended to assist in constitutionality. Look at our deep concerns that you cannot just go into zones and create a division in society of the type that that bill proposed.”

Al-Rawi said the Opposition and Independents put forward 106 amendments to Bill, 63, of which were from the Opposition.

He noted, all were disregarded by the Attorney General.

Al-Rawi said the amendments put forth were to protect the public from unconstitutional police powers from the army, improving transparency and strengthening safeguards.

He said a major concern of the Opposition was the power given to the Minister over the army, with little to no oversight.

Al-Rawi said, “All 63 amendments were to remove police powers from the army, were to have safeguards in place, were to specifically remove the power of the minister, to have general and specific direction over the army, but also to make sure that they had transparency in the law.”

“We came to committee stage in Section 13 of the bill. Clause 13 of the bill, we propose an amendment that said that the method by which you identify joint forces had to be put into law consented published so that people know,” he said.

Al-Rawi, further discussing the amendments, said, “We proposed in our amendments the manner in which you could fix the law. We proposed that the Police Complaints authority would have to have oversight over army officers. We proposed an amendment to the Defence Act. We put in the safeguards, because I’m asking you to pay attention as murder and crime will escalate as the state of emergency comes to an end on the 31st of January, and as everybody is going to walk out of detention, the vast majority of them, I think it’s one or two that have actual criminal matters. The vast majority of them are going to go, not having had an interview by the police. So you just lock them up for the state of emergency. What are you going to do?”

Saying, crime and criminality cannot be dealt with a failure to understand the law, Al-Rawi said if the government was serious about dealing with crime and having the Bill passed, they would have considered the amendments.

He said, “Read the play. The play obviously was that they did not want the law to succeed, because when you have 106 amendments before you, that fix a lot of the constitutional issues, where our request was to go to a Joint Select Committee, if you’re really serious about it. The leader of the opposition has said on many occasions that the opposition will support what is commendable.”

Al-Rawi stated, “We will do our best to fix what comes before us. But I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, there was no sincere intent to have these special zones passed into law, none. It is going to be a pivot point for the opposition to be blamed as to why criminality is going to rise in this country.”

He said the rule of law was critical and the Opposition would continue to uphold it.