Silver lining upon the Caribbean Sea

THE EDITOR: The highest court of St Vincent and the Grenadines upheld the crime laws against buggery and indecency, notwithstanding demands by so-called LGBTQ individuals to be protected from them.

The court did this without having to make the law depend on the constitution, and this is absolutely right. The crimes of buggery and indecency do not have to be constitutionalised for them to be good law, and having them as crimes in the constitution is meant to reflect these basic legal realities. It is the same for abortion.

Let nations take note. Nations do not exist to carry out the executive wishes of foreign presidents. Whether it is Joe Biden in the US trying to blacklist pro-life activists, or Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu trying to annihilate Amalek, or Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine trying to get rid of anyone opposed to his pet hatreds, or China's Xi Jinping trying to extradite Uighurs who might be living abroad and exposing their problems in China, etc; nations abide by their own sound laws.

This has many implications including for banks. Banks cannot enforce sanctions on nationals that are contrary to the laws of TT and that have no basis whatsoever for guidance of policy. To do otherwise would mean they are breaking TT laws. Among such, discrimination and victimisation quietly ensconced inside their "high-security organisations." This is an inherent contradiction coming with FATCA and FATF and unsupportable; and if these conventions are not truly workable in TT for its full advantage, they have to be undone.

As with many things, here too the Rowley Government got blindsided. The Central Bank cannot be endorsing non-contract norms that are not to do with banking and not to do with TT, but always foisting some sudden new requirement on the banking transaction as if it was contractual. Banks that cannot conform and are seen to be incongruent or arbitrary must then have their licences revoked.

This also has ramifications for nationals when travelling abroad or just getting legitimate foreign exchange inside TT or just opening or closing an account.

E GALY

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