How to comply with the law

Submitted by Edmund Gall on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 13:00
I'd like to thank Parliament for reminding us that there are really two ways to comply with the laws of T&T: either change your behaviour, or change the law.
 
The old Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act, under Chapter 48:50, says that only the President has the authority to use the coat of arms on official vehicles.  The coat of arms appeared on the Prime Minister's vehicle, PBM 1, in late 2008, over one year ago.  The Prime Minister is not the President.  So it appeared to common thinking that those responsible for the Prime Minister's fleet of vehicles contravened the law, and the Prime Minister appeared happy to be transported in that vehicle despite the questions over its legality.
 
How does this get rectified?  Rather than remove the coat of arms from PBM 1, the Government seeks to change the law.
 
Just to complete the lesson, the Hon. Minister of Works and Transport, who piloted this change in the law, simultaneously justified revised penalties for other traffic law contraventions based on the existence of consistent complaints about lawlessness on the roads.
 
So for one act of lawlessness, we change the law to exclude the act; for the others, we get bigger sticks.  Such irony delivered with a straight face.  If we follow this lesson in legal compliance from our esteemed law-makers, what hope for diminished lawlessness by the public?
Blog: 
Colm Imbert
coat of arms
traffic laws
MOWT

Comments

Submitted by Edmund Gall on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 09:53.

... by way of a Letter to the Editor in the Trinidad Guardian (02 Mar 2010), reproduced below in case the link ever breaks:

Ambiguity in law being corrected

Published: 2 Mar 2010

I have taken note of a letter from Edmund Gall, who is apparently living in England, complaining about the amendments that are being made to the Motor Vehicle and Road Traffic Act.

Gall is aggrieved because the Government is seeking to remove the ambiguity that currently exists in the law with respect to identification marks on vehicles, in particular the identification marks used on vehicles owned by the Office of the Prime Minister. However, Gall is wrong in every respect and these overseas letter writers need to get their facts straight before rushing to print.

In the first place, contrary to Gall’s erroneous assertions, the Act does not authorise the President to use the coat of arms on his official vehicles. Instead, all the Act does, at Clause 16, is exempt the President from the requirement for identification marks on his vehicles and there is no reference whatsoever to the coat of arms in the Act. The reality is that the use of the coat of arms is authorised by the Minister of National Security under the National Emblems Act, a completely different piece of legislation. Gall is clearly also unaware of the fact that in 1997, under a previous Government, the Motor Vehicle and Road Traffic Act was changed to give the minister with responsibility for transport the authority to approve the procedures for registration of vehicles. The requirement for licensing of vehicles was abolished at the same time and changes were also made to the requirements for identification marks on vehicles.

As a result, since 1997, the Transport Minister has been empowered to authorise new procedures for the registration of vehicles. However, the necessary changes were not made to the regulations, thus creating a conflict between the primary legislation (the Act) and the subsidiary legislation (the regulations). This is the ambiguity that we are now correcting.

Colm Imbert
Minister of Works and Transport

Submitted by Edmund Gall on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 18:14.

... at How to comply with the law - Part 2

Submitted by How to comply w... (not verified) on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 17:59.

[...] He responded to issues I raised in How to comply with the law - Part 1, and advised [...]