There are a few pro­vi­sions in the new State of Emer­gency (SoE) pow­ers which are said to se­ri­ous­ly en­croach on per­son­al free­doms of in­di­vid­u­als be­yond what pre­vi­ous SoEs gave to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and his of­fi­cers.

Of even greater con­cern is that the call­ing of yet an­oth­er SoE, af­ter two straight emer­gency pe­ri­ods, speaks of des­per­a­tion and a demon­strat­ed in­abil­i­ty to dis­man­tle the crim­i­nal gangs.

Un­der the March 2026 act, po­lice of­fi­cers are be­ing giv­en ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers to probe in­to in­di­vid­ual free­doms. The reg­u­la­tions al­so af­fect the or­di­nary abil­i­ty of cit­i­zens to com­mu­ni­cate and in­ter­act with each oth­er. There are al­so no­table re­stric­tions on an in­di­vid­ual with re­spect to his/her em­ploy­ment or busi­ness, res­i­dence and in re­la­tion to who he/she keeps as­so­ci­a­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with.

One oth­er pro­vi­sion that is draw­ing con­cern is the ca­pac­i­ty of the po­lice to in­ter­vene in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions be­tween and amongst in­di­vid­u­als, which can “in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty; or to do any act or have any ar­ti­cle in his pos­ses­sion with a view to mak­ing or fa­cil­i­tat­ing the mak­ing of any such en­deav­our.”

Pre­sum­ably, these ar­ti­cles in­clude com­mu­ni­ca­tion via cell phones, com­put­ers or any such de­vices, which can be deemed to be un­law­ful.

Fun­da­men­tal­ly, though, where the re­sort to the new SoE is of great­est con­cern is that it is de­rived from the fail­ure of the Gov­ern­ment to pass in­to law the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill. Even be­yond such, is the demon­strat­ed in­abil­i­ty to put for­ward a ful­ly in­te­grat­ed an­ti-crime plan to counter the crim­i­nal up­surge.

Such a plan of ne­ces­si­ty must in­clude an el­e­ment to trans­form the so­cial con­di­tions which have con­tributed to the growth and spread of crim­i­nal­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

It begs the ques­tion: Where are the plans the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and its lead­ers boast­ed of hav­ing to counter crime when the par­ty was in op­po­si­tion and can­vass­ing to be put in­to of­fice? It’s a fair ques­tion to ask of the Gov­ern­ment to­day.

That the Gov­ern­ment thinks it nec­es­sary to re­sort to this new SoE is a di­rect re­fusal to en­ter­tain pro­posed amend­ments made by the In­de­pen­dent and Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors in re­la­tion to the ZOSO Bill. To com­pound that re­fusal is the fact of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, hav­ing ac­knowl­edged that there were many good rec­om­men­da­tions amongst those pro­posed in the Sen­ate, then claimed that the Gov­ern­ment did not have the time to en­gage changes as the SoE was about to end.

The re­al­i­ty of to­day is a re­turn to the very vi­o­lent crime which pre­ced­ed the start and end of the two pre­vi­ous SoEs. Sus­pect­ed gang lead­ers and oth­er crim­i­nals are now back on the streets and the dai­ly re­portage by the me­dia of their venge­ful vi­o­lence against each oth­er and that com­mit­ted on law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, has restart­ed in suf­fi­cient ex­plo­sion to send the Gov­ern­ment scram­bling to pro­tect its record of achieve­ment over the pe­ri­od of the pre­vi­ous emer­gen­cies.

The mo­ment, there­fore, has ar­rived for Gov­ern­ment to de­liv­er on its promis­es to en­gage, counter and de­stroy the gangs to re­lieve the so­ci­ety of the bur­den of crime.