Defense Attorneys Warn of Legal Crisis Over Emergency Powers

The Association of Defense Attorneys is also raising objections to a clause that would retroactively validate past states of emergency, even those already challenged in court. According to the association, this move could undermine the rule of law and set a troubling precedent. And then there’s the proposed Gun and Gang Court. While the idea of a specialized court sounds promising, the attorneys say it lacks clear safeguards to ensure fairness and independence.

 

Audrey Matura, Attorney-at-law

“Now, the danger with that is that once you entrench it in the constitution, what you are trying to do is take away rights that you already have, civil rights that people have and taking it away in a different way. So you are saying that the very constitution I would have been able to go to enforce my right is now making it unlawful for me to enforce that right. That’s one of the dangers of it. The second danger is that, well, this government is a super government because they need two-thirds majority to be able to do that and they do have that. The third thing is that we have a non-existent opposition fighting with themselves, and so they can’t even come forward and say let us fight for the people. We have already gone through a similar situation like this, but I would say this one is worse. What is happening [is that] individuals in this country have taken the Johnny Briceño administration to court for things that were done by the Dean Barrow administration because the SOEs started with the Dean Barrow administration. And so, what they did, they are now saying, “You all took us to court for something illegal we did, well we will now make it legal, but we will not pass a law like Dean Barrow did, we will go and tamper with the constitution. And the reason they are able to do that is because they have the majority, the super majority. So that’s the hypocrisy in it. And why I say it is worse is because Dean Barrow only tried to pass a law. What Johnny Briceno is doing is trying to change the constitution.”