Gail Alexan­der

The Gov­ern­ment should re­move claus­es from the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions which pre­vent free­dom of as­sem­bly and march­es if the State in­tends to ex­tend the state of emer­gency, Op­po­si­tion leader Kei­th Row­ley has said. Row­ley made the call for the re­moval of such claus­es dur­ing yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives de­bate on the state of emer­gency. Row­ley al­so called on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy to say ex­act­ly what cri­sis had been avert­ed by the state of emer­gency. And the Diego Mar­tin MP con­demned Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs' per­for­mance and ques­tioned the con­tin­ued ab­sence of deputy CoP Jack Ewats­ki. Yes­ter­day's de­bate which start­ed at 10 am was sched­uled to end at 6.30 pm and re­sume at 9 am to­day at the Red House.

While there was a full-turnout of Gov­ern­ment MPs, the Op­po­si­tion had 11 of its 12 MPs. PNM MP Pa­tri­cia McIn­tosh, who is in Bar­ba­dos, was ab­sent. Speak­ing af­ter Sandy pi­lot­ed the mo­tion on the state of emer­gency, Row­ley wad­ed in­to Sandy for his per­ceived fail­ure to say ex­act­ly what cri­sis Gov­ern­ment had avert­ed with the state of emer­gency. "Iden­ti­fy the cri­sis to us. To­day, on­ly he knows what the cri­sis is which he can't tell the Par­lia­ment-he can't even give us a sce­nario of this thing they said they pro­tect­ed us from," Row­ley added. "If he (Sandy) is such a big de­lib­er­a­tor on is­sues, is he the same Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter who told the PM to ap­point Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine as head of the SSA?" Row­ley asked.

Call­ing for re­moval of claus­es on as­sem­blies and march­es, Row­ley said these is­sues had noth­ing to do with crime. He said gang lead­ers were not known to un­der­take such ac­tion. Row­ley ques­tioned why CoP Gibbs had been al­lowed to leave T&T around the time of the state of emer­gency. He al­so ac­cused Gibbs of "polic­ing by PR." He al­so said there has been no word on the con­tin­ued ab­sence of deputy CoP Ewats­ki. Row­ley said both for­eign of­fi­cers brought ab­solute­ly "noth­ing" to the ta­ble. Row­ley said he him­self had had first-hand knowl­edge of the crime sit­u­a­tion since he was once forced to de­fend his preg­nant wife from a dag­ger-wield­ing ban­dit in his bed­room.

Row­ley elicit­ed mut­ed protests from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when he said there were peo­ple who were hap­py that there were no Par­lia­ment sit­tings and that the Con­sti­tu­tion had been sus­pend­ed in the state of emer­gency at­mos­phere. He al­so said there were peo­ple who were con­cerned that the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion al­lowed some peo­ple to be stereo­typed and that a tox­ic at­mos­phere had been cre­at­ed by the emer­gency in which peo­ple could be abused in T&T. Row­ley said the Pres­i­dent's state­ment on the is­sue mere­ly re­flect­ed what the Pres­i­dent had been told about the sit­u­a­tion by the Gov­ern­ment.

He main­tained that the Gov­ern­ment had been em­bar­rassed in­to re­sort­ing to the state of emer­gency fol­low­ing re­cent Ari­ma killings. He said the PP's elec­tion man­i­festo had nev­er men­tioned any­thing about an emer­gency in crime fight­ing plans even though it had been pro­posed by the Ken Gor­don team since 2005. Al­though Par­lia­ment' spe­cial se­lect com­mit­tee-in­clud­ing a ma­jor­i­ty of Gov­ern­ment mem­bers-passed the An­ti Gang Bill in May, Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment still saw the emer­gency as the so­lu­tion to crime. "This has noth­ing to do with who big and who bad. This has to do with recog­nis­ing op­tions," Row­ley said, re­in­forc­ing PNM's ar­gu­ments for use of the An­ti Gang Bill.

Row­ley al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to scru­ti­nise state­ments by PP's Bar­ring­ton Thomas on Face­book which he ex­pressed con­cern about. Row­ley said the de­bate was not about the last elec­tion or whether for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had said cer­tain things or whether T&T had a se­ri­ous crime prob­lem. He said the PNM had cur­tailed kid­nap­pings with sus­tained po­lice ac­tion and that one of the first vis­i­tors to ex UNC Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day had been Mus­limeen leader Abu Bakr.