Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

While the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­ports the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s State of Emer­gency (SoE), no one has been charged for any of­fence and the pub­lic is wait­ing for at least some­one to be brought to jus­tice for what has caused this SoE.

This was the word from Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les yes­ter­day, as she spoke dur­ing the ex­tra­or­di­nary House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sit­ting on a mo­tion con­cern­ing the Pres­i­dent’s state­ment on the de­c­la­ra­tion of the SoE and the grounds for it.

Beck­les said the Op­po­si­tion took the se­cu­ri­ty and well-be­ing of the pub­lic very se­ri­ous­ly and hav­ing the ex­tra­or­di­nary sit­ting to deal with a mat­ter of such sig­nif­i­cance, the PNM con­clud­ed, meant that Gov­ern­ment would have brought MPs out af­ter col­lect­ing “very se­ri­ous crit­i­cal ev­i­dence and in­for­ma­tion.”

She said the de­bate on an­oth­er SoE, which is be­ing held for a sec­ond time in less than sev­en months, would in­di­cate the mat­ter was of ex­treme­ly grave con­cern, es­pe­cial­ly as the UNC Gov­ern­ment was now in its third month.

Beck­les said the PNM would sup­port the SoE procla­ma­tion in the in­ter­est of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, she said the Op­po­si­tion’s sup­port was not blind or un­con­di­tion­al, since there must be vig­i­lant bal­ance in pro­tect­ing peo­ple’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“We don’t take light­ly the im­pli­ca­tions of an SoE. Such mea­sures must nev­er be­come rou­tine or for po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy, they must be used spar­ing­ly and un­der vig­i­lant Par­lia­ment scruti­ny,” she said.

Beck­les said while she’d made it clear that the PNM was will­ing to work with the Gov­ern­ment on good law and while the PNM was not in the busi­ness of politi­cis­ing crime, when its own SoE was de­bat­ed last De­cem­ber, the then UNC op­po­si­tion had said it was be­ing done “for pur­pos­es of po­lit­i­cal gim­micry.”

She al­so said the PNM had brought leg­is­la­tion to deal with crime but the UNC didn’t sup­port it.

When the SoE was called, Beck­les said there was con­fu­sion in the pub­lic’s minds and some felt like they were liv­ing in a mil­i­tarised state. She said she was grate­ful for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s in­for­ma­tion, but based on his re­cent state­ments, “What the pub­lic is re­al­ly con­cerned about be­tween Ju­ly 18 and to­day, no one ef­fec­tive­ly has been charged for any of­fence and I’m more con­vinced that, based on the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s state­ments, that the Gov­ern­ment must be in pos­ses­sion of some kind of ev­i­dence that would lead the pub­lic to be con­vinced about the need for the SoE.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the mat­ter may cur­tail de­tails, Beck­les said ,”I think the pub­lic is wait­ing very pa­tient­ly based on in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed, for at least some­one to be brought to jus­tice as it re­lates to what has oc­curred that’s caused this SoE.”

Cit­ing re­ports of an at­tor­ney be­ing blind­fold­ed be­fore go­ing to see a client at Teteron Bar­racks, she said the peo­ple re­lo­cat­ed to an­oth­er place had al­ready been in cus­tody, “So it’s not a ques­tion that new per­sons have been ar­rest­ed.”

Seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion of a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle cit­ing de­tails of the cur­rent threat, Beck­les not­ed that un­der the UNC’s 2011 SoE - fol­low­ing alert on an as­sas­si­na­tion plot re­gard­ing the then PM and sev­er­al min­is­ters - 17 peo­ple were de­tained. But by De­cem­ber 2022, all were re­leased due to lack of ev­i­dence.

“So, it’s rea­son­able to ask ques­tions so we don’t find our­selves in any sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion where the pub­lic be­lieves we have a re­peat of what oc­curred in 2011,” she said.

Beck­les called for the UNC’s crime plan to deal with mur­ders and kid­nap­pings af­ter the SoE. She said the UNC al­ways pressed the PNM for its plans.

Ab­sent yes­ter­day were PNM MPS Colm Im­bert and Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.—Gail Alexan­der