Thir­teen days ago, res­i­dents of T&T woke up to news that the coun­try was un­der its sec­ond State of Emer­gency (SoE) for the year.

The SoE was giv­en the force of law by a procla­ma­tion from Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo that she was sat­is­fied "a pub­lic emer­gency has risen as a re­sult of the oc­cur­rence of ac­tion that has been tak­en, or is im­me­di­ate­ly threat­ened, by any per­son, of such a na­ture and on so ex­ten­sive a scale, as to be like­ly to en­dan­ger the pub­lic safe­ty." 

In mak­ing the procla­ma­tion that the pub­lic's safe­ty was be­ing "im­me­di­ate­ly threat­ened," the Pres­i­dent act­ed on the ad­vice of Cab­i­net, which re­spond­ed to a rec­om­men­da­tion from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro.

T&T's new top cop said the po­lice had re­ceived cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence that an or­gan­ised crime syn­di­cate, in­volv­ing men who were be­ing held on re­mand, was specif­i­cal­ly look­ing to tar­get se­nior State of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing judges, pros­e­cu­tors and politi­cians.

Short­ly af­ter the de­c­la­ra­tion of the SoE, 10 mem­bers of this so-called crime syn­di­cate were moved from Build­ing 13 in the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison at Arou­ca to lo­ca­tions on the Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la con­trolled by T&T's mil­i­tary. Al­though the Arou­ca fa­cil­i­ty is la­belled "max­i­mum se­cu­ri­ty," the pris­on­ers were moved be­cause it is claimed they had ac­cess to mo­bile phones that were be­ing used for ne­far­i­ous pur­pos­es.

As it stands now, at­tor­neys for the men are fil­ing ap­pli­ca­tions in the High Court seek­ing to have un­hin­dered ac­cess to their clients in the heav­i­ly for­ti­fied pris­ons in Ch­aguara­mas.

Gov­ern­ment, as well, has ex­tend­ed the SoE, even as it firms up the de­f­i­n­i­tion of the pris­ons where the group is be­ing held.

And the pop­u­la­tion is go­ing about its busi­ness in a height­ened state of ner­vous­ness, as a re­sult of the un­prece­dent­ed cir­cum­stances that caused the procla­ma­tion of the SoE.

The ques­tion that Gov­ern­ment has not an­swered as yet is what is the end game for the 10 in­car­cer­at­ed men, based on "cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence" that their in­ten­tion was mur­der and may­hem?

T&T's Con­sti­tu­tion, at Sec­tion 10, pro­vides that be­fore its ex­pi­ra­tion, the SoE Procla­ma­tion "may be ex­tend­ed from time to time by res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ed by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, so, how­ev­er, that no ex­ten­sion ex­ceeds three months and the ex­ten­sions do not in the ag­gre­gate ex­ceed six months."

So, even if Gov­ern­ment is mind­ed to keep the group un­der mil­i­tary lock­down for six months, what hap­pens to them there­after? 

Af­ter they are dis­charged from their Ch­aguara­mas pris­ons, are they go­ing to be re­turned to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, which has proven to be con­sis­tent­ly in­ca­pable of keep­ing mo­bile phones and sim cards out of the hands of oc­cu­pants? Or are they go­ing to be tak­en to court to face the charges aris­ing out of the "cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence" that caused the cur­rent up­heavals? 

There is no doubt that the po­lice are prepar­ing to take the po­si­tion that their "cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence" is too sen­si­tive to risk be­ing ex­posed to the cut and thrust of a ju­di­cial process. And the ju­di­cial path­way may be part of the prob­lem, as one of the in­car­cer­at­ed men has been held on re­mand for more than 10 years.

If the Gov­ern­ment has a clear idea of the end game for these men be­yond the SoE, it needs to share it with the pop­u­la­tion as soon as pos­si­ble.