A state of emer­gency (SoE) and the en­force­ment of the death penal­ty are non-starters, say po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath and for­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas.

And cer­tain busi­ness­peo­ple have mixed views - back­ing hang­ing and a SoE - while oth­ers have warned that an SoE has to be clear­ly thought out.

The an­a­lysts and busi­ness­peo­ple were asked to com­ment yes­ter­day on Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s call for a re­turn to an SoE to deal with the crime surge dur­ing her par­ty’s An­ti-crime Town hall meet­ing in St Joseph on Mon­day.

Dur­ing the fo­rum, Per­sad-Bisses­sar backed a call by po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad for a state of emer­gency due to the crime sit­u­a­tion.

Oth­er mem­bers of the pub­lic al­so brought up the en­force­ment of the death penal­ty. (See page 6 & 7)

Ad­dress­ing the SoE is­sue, Ra­goonath said, “I didn’t see the UNC’s event, all I saw was what was re­port­ed where the Op­po­si­tion Leader called for a state of emer­gency af­ter Dr Ram­per­sad called for an SoE. But that (SoE) doesn’t make a dif­fer­ence one way or an­oth­er, as the Gov­ern­ment has al­ready in­di­cat­ed it wouldn’t call an SoE. As an SoE as an idea is a non-starter.”

Du­mas mean­while said, “I haven’t seen the UNC’s crime sym­po­sium. But gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, the Gov­ern­ment won’t agree to a state of emer­gency, es­pe­cial­ly if the Op­po­si­tion or its leader calls for it.”

Du­mas said he couldn’t see Gov­ern­ment agree­ment on a SoE un­less it be­comes a na­tion­al call and one UNC meet­ing couldn’t de­cide on that.

“It will have to be some­thing both in Trinidad and To­ba­go and that will take some time for UNC meet­ings to be held but un­der the cir­cum­stances, I don’t see the Gov­ern­ment agree­ing to calls for it,” Du­mas said.

On hang­ing, Du­mas said gen­er­al­ly, his un­der­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion was that the Privy Coun­cil ruled that a per­son had to be tried with­in a cer­tain num­ber of years and even if found guilty, hang­ing couldn’t be im­posed just like that.

“And we still have the Privy Coun­cil as the fi­nal ap­peal court. If we have the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice as our fi­nal court, I don’t know if it would be any dif­fer­ent - so hang­ing, frankly is a non-starter,” Du­mas added.

“And gen­er­al­ly too, peo­ple call­ing for hang­ing haven’t giv­en any ev­i­dence to show that it is a de­ter­rent to crime.”

Starlight CEO Ger­ald Aboud said, “I saw where the UNC leader spoke about a state of emer­gency and I say - yes. I think T&T should have a state of emer­gency - sure and if they need to set a cur­few, yes al­so. I think they need to do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary now.

“As a mat­ter of fact, we’ve had very re­cent meet­ings with dif­fer­ent bod­ies, in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions that have con­firmed that crime is af­fect­ing the econ­o­my. Nat­u­ral­ly, when some­thing is af­fect­ing this coun­try’s econ­o­my, it af­fects every­body in the coun­try, top to bot­tom, and things can­not move, no mat­ter how much ef­fort is put in­to it. So some­thing has to be done. Crime is the num­ber one prob­lem in T&T and will con­tin­ue to be if noth­ing is done and peo­ple sim­ply talk around it.”

T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) CEO Ramesh Ramdeen, who said he at­tend­ed UNC’s event, said, “We be­lieve if hang­ing is on the books as the law of the land - ex­e­cute the law of the land.

“Un­til it’s re­moved, the law of the land says if you com­mit a crime and go through the ap­peal process and found falling in­to the statu­to­ry time­frame, which is less than five years - car­ry out the law of the land, which is to hang.”

On the SoE, Ramdeen said, “I think this is some­thing that needs to be clear­ly thought through with the rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers be­cause any SoE can cause eco­nom­ic hard­ship for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. So, TTMA rec­om­mends stake­hold­ers come to­geth­er and fig­ure out if a SoE is the best op­tion to curb crime.”

Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce (Am­cham) CEO Ni­rad Tewarie mean­while said they will share their thoughts on crime and its im­pact on busi­ness at to­day’s eco­nom­ic out­look.

T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce CEO Stephen de Gannes al­so said their po­si­tion would be is­sued lat­er on.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said, “We cer­tain­ly need to en­force the laws of T&T and hang­ing is the law. We al­so need to en­force the an­ti-gang laws - we have a se­ri­ous gang prob­lem in T&T.”

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Cham­bers chair­man Vivek Char­ran said the 2011 state of emer­gency un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment had a cur­few but didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly give the re­sults, al­though the mur­der and crime rates dropped.

He said the “Big Fish” weren’t net­ted or many ar­rests made. He said if a SoE is done and the army is called out long-term that is dif­fer­ent, but warned against pos­si­ble “bad ap­ples” in that sec­tor abus­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

Char­ran felt that amid the un­abat­ed spate of mur­ders, hang­ing would be a de­ter­rent since cul­prits felt that fac­ing years in jail was noth­ing big but be­ing ex­e­cut­ed for mur­der would de­ter them.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour didn’t re­ply to What­sApped query on death penal­ty en­force­ment moves.