Gail Alexan­der

Yes­ter­day’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ de­bate on the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill (SOB) went as ex­pect­ed—un­fil­tered.

“Flame-throw­ing” be­gan with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie. Op­po­si­tion MP Kei­th Scot­land re­tort­ed.

The SOB didn’t reach yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate sit­ting. When it does soon, if there are few­er prob­lems for pas­sage—mi­nus a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote—there won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be soft­er ar­gu­ments.

Though much-tout­ed, the State of Emer­gency suc­cess lev­el is clear­ly in­suf­fi­cient re­gard­ing T&T’s crime prob­lem: Gov­ern­ment’s rush to avert “re­lapse” in an­nounc­ing the SOB pri­or to the SoE’s end.

Fear fac­tor in­deed: re­gard­ing pub­lic safe­ty falling again; Gov­ern­ment’s al­ready chal­lenged record de­clin­ing fur­ther; plus the as­sort­ed shad­ows that a Gov­ern­ment in its po­si­tion holds in a land­scape where even Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers hold non-whis­pered con­cerns.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill cur­tain-rais­er on Wednes­day bor­rowed Trumpian slo­gan­is­ing,“We’ll Make (T&T) Safe Again”, seek­ing to show strength con­fronting post-SoE T&T, mi­nus Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der tools and with re­opened ar­eas, in­clud­ing out­side of the Red House where protests were pro­hib­it­ed dur­ing SoE.

The SOB chal­lenges res­i­dents of the sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts to live with an­oth­er threat over­head for two years: crime or SO de­c­la­ra­tion.

The sit­u­a­tion con­firms the bill as Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est an­ti-crime move (as SoEs were) and is ac­tu­al­ly an ex­pan­sion of dai­ly po­lice work, fo­cus­ing on re­al-time sit­u­a­tions—bereft of as­pects need­ed to holis­ti­cal­ly deal with crime, which any re­al an­ti-crime plan needs.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it al­so con­firms the Gov­ern­ment’s view that se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies can­not main­tain safe­ty with cur­rent crime lev­els with­out such a frame­work.

It’ll be in force un­til 2028 through two To­ba­go Car­ni­vals, two T&T Car­ni­vals, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions and UNC ex­ec­u­tive/lead­er­ship polls.

Out­comes are ex­pect­ed to pol­ish Gov­ern­ment’s se­cu­ri­ty man­age­ment record for test­ing in LG polls and 2030 gen­er­al elec­tions.

It’s ahead how many Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment con­stituen­cies suf­fer SO de­c­la­ra­tion; or le­gal chal­lenges arise. Cit­i­zens will sim­ply add the SOB to their list of life un­der the UNC. And move on.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who on Wednes­day re­peat­ed­ly quot­ed T&T Guardian and CNC3 re­ports on SoE suc­cess, will be held to her promise that her bill holds “firm safe­guards for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.”

With her use of in­de­pen­dent me­dia to tout/val­i­date Gov­ern­ment’s work, sim­i­lar­ly, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh will be held to his state­ment in Wednes­day’s Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion bill de­bate: “We must recog­nise, not every cit­i­zen in­ter­acts with Gov­ern­ment in the same way. For that rea­son, I don’t be­lieve we should dis­miss the val­ue of the news­pa­per as a means of pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

It will be cit­i­zens’ loss—and ul­ti­mate­ly Gov­ern­ment’s—no mat­ter how much rev­enue is saved, if this bill for state agency pub­li­ca­tions on min­istry web­sites kills T&T’s na­tion­al mes­sen­gers, and con­tin­ues with in­ef­fi­cien­cies and con­fus­ing lay­outs of­ten seen on web­sites.

Gov­ern­ment’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion reach is al­ready low, fol­low­ing min­is­ters’ si­lence on queries and nil post- Cab­i­net brief­in­gs in sev­er­al months.

Whether Cab­i­net changes aren’t in fo­cus yet—with the caveat “there’s al­ways room for im­prove­ments”—Wednes­day’s de­bate fea­tured UNC back­benchers Hansen Nar­i­nesingh and Shiv­an­na Sam. Change of Gov­ern­ment mem­bers on Par­lia­ment Com­mit­tees al­so saw “new­bies” ap­point­ed.

The For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­istry boost­ing Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­na­tion­al out­reach in­cludes, among achieve­ments, Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s meet­ing at noon Wednes­day with act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez.

The bi­lat­er­al fo­cus­es main­ly on trade and en­er­gy is­sues, plus mul­ti­lat­er­al co-op­er­a­tion. Whether it pro­duces an ex­change of in­vi­ta­tions for lead­ers’ vis­its to T&T and Venezuela, it’s a win for Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who, amid the 2025 dust-up with Venezue­lan of­fi­cials, was dubbed “Per­sona Non Gra­ta.”

Whether Wednes­day’s “ice­break­er” re­moves the la­bel, it will of­fi­cialise the height­en­ing of co-op­er­a­tion re­gard­ing pri­or­i­ty items agreed on at the re­cent Cara­cas meet­ing. It’ll un­fold what state­ment will be is­sued by both gov­ern­ments, post-meet­ing

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s flip-flop­ping pen­chant aside, it’s ahead how Ro­driguez ra­tio­nalis­es meet­ing a leader her gov­ern­ment deemed “PNG” and whether the same ap­proach Venezuela adopt­ed for the US—which cap­tured Ro­driguez’s boss Nico­las Maduro—will ap­ply to T&T.

Mean­while, PNM elec­tions Of­fi­cer In­dar Paras­ram says there’s “ab­solute­ly no prob­lems” in San Fer­nan­do East par­ty group polls, the foun­da­tion on which the elec­tion of SFE’s new ex­ec­u­tive and chair­man will be con­duct­ed on Oc­to­ber 15—and which could de­ter­mine if PNM holds the seat in 2030.