Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany

On March 3rd, 2026, the twelfth state of emer­gency (SoE) in our coun­try’s post-in­de­pen­dence his­to­ry was pro­claimed. Over the years, SoEs have been de­clared for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons.

The fol­low­ing is a break­down of all twelve SoEs and the rea­sons for which they were an­nounced:

1. March 9th, 1965 – this first SOE in the post-in­de­pen­dence era was de­clared in se­lect­ed ar­eas of the sug­ar belt to ad­dress sug­ar in­dus­try strikes and to al­low the gov­ern­ment to en­act the In­dus­tri­al Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Act. It was con­fined to (a) the Ch­agua­nas, Montser­rat and Cou­va wards in Coun­ty Ca­roni, (b) the Pointe-a-Pierre, Na­pari­ma and Sa­van­na Grande wards in the Coun­ty of Vic­to­ria, and (c) the Tacarigua ward in the Coun­ty of St George. On March 12th, 1965, the St Ann’s ward in the Coun­ty of St George was added. This ad­di­tion was made so that then-prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, could have CLR James un­der house ar­rest up­on ar­rival in the coun­try to cov­er the Crick­et Test match be­tween Aus­tralia and the West In­dies for two UK news­pa­pers.

2. April 21st, 1970 – this sec­ond SoE was na­tion­al in scope. It was called to ad­dress the Black Pow­er up­ris­ing that threat­ened to over­throw the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment regime of prime min­is­ter Williams. Dur­ing this SoE, a num­ber of the Black Pow­er lead­ers like Makan­dal Daa­ga (then Ged­des Granger), Kafra Kham­bon (then Dave Dar­beau) and oth­ers were de­tained by the State.

3. Oc­to­ber 19th, 1971 – this third SoE was na­tion­al in scope and was de­signed to ad­dress the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­dus­tri­al un­rest in the coun­try. What was dif­fer­ent about this SoE was that the Williams gov­ern­ment went to Par­lia­ment to en­act an Emer­gency Pow­ers Act (No. 29 of 1971) that em­pow­ered the State to un­der­take a va­ri­ety of ac­tions. The long ti­tle of the act was “to make pro­vi­sion for the pub­lic safe­ty, pub­lic or­der and de­fence of Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the pe­ri­od of pub­lic emer­gency.” The act was to have ef­fect on­ly dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the SoE.

4. No­vem­ber 4th, 1976 – this fourth SoE was con­fined on­ly to the then Gen­er­al Post Of­fice on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, be­cause there were mail sort­ing de­lays in the sort­ing room at the Post Of­fice. The pres­i­den­tial state­ment spoke of “un­law­ful in­dus­tri­al ac­tion” and an “alarm­ing pile up of mail”. (Hansard, HOR, Vol. 1, No. 6, p. 416).

5. Oc­to­ber 23rd, 1977 – this fifth SoE was con­fined on­ly to the Pi­ar­co and Crown Point Air­ports af­ter the com­ple­tion of in­ves­ti­ga­tions fol­low­ing the crash of a Cubana Air­lines air­craft off Bar­ba­dos in Sep­tem­ber 1976. Those in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed “se­ri­ous de­fi­cien­cies in our sys­tem of air se­cu­ri­ty.” (Hansard, HOR, Vol. 3, No. 4, p. 98).

6. Ju­ly 28th, 1990 – this sixth SoE was na­tion­al­ly de­clared to deal with the at­tempt­ed coup by the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen on Ju­ly 27th, 1990.

7. Au­gust 3rd, 1995 – this sev­enth SoE was de­clared on­ly in the City of Port-of-Spain in or­der to de­tain the Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Oc­c­ah Sea­paul, at her of­fi­cial res­i­dence to pre­vent her from pre­sid­ing over the HOR so that the gov­ern­ment could pass an amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion that would es­tab­lish a mech­a­nism to re­move a Speak­er from of­fice.

8. Au­gust 21st, 2011 – this eighth SoE was de­clared na­tion­al­ly to ad­dress a se­ri­ous is­sue of na­tion­al crime.

9. May 15th, 2021 – this ninth SoE was de­clared na­tion­al­ly to ad­dress the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in or­der to per­mit the gov­ern­ment to im­pose cur­fews, as the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance did not em­pow­er the State to im­pose cur­fews.

10. De­cem­ber 30th, 2024 – this tenth SoE was de­clared for the pur­pose of deal­ing with the na­tion­al crime sit­u­a­tion.

11. Ju­ly 18th, 2025 – this eleventh SoE was de­clared for the pur­pose of deal­ing with the na­tion­al crime sit­u­a­tion.

12. March 3rd, 2026 – this twelfth SoE was de­clared for the pur­pose of deal­ing with the na­tion­al crime sit­u­a­tion.

Over the last 64 years of our in­de­pen­dence, the types of SoEs have var­ied from se­lec­tive ap­pli­ca­tion (1965, 1976, 1977 and 1995) to na­tion­al ap­pli­ca­tion in all of the oth­ers. The rea­sons have var­ied from a pile-up of mail at the for­mer Gen­er­al Post Of­fice (1976) to an at­tempt­ed over­throw of the State (1990).

In more re­cent times, the sever­i­ty of the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try has dri­ven gov­ern­ments of dif­fer­ent par­ties to de­clare SoEs to deal with vi­o­lent crime (2024, 2025 and 2026). This prob­lem was al­so flagged in 2011. In the ab­sence of al­ter­na­tive leg­isla­tive tools, the State has to use what­ev­er law­ful means nec­es­sary to ad­dress se­ri­ous vi­o­lent crime.

In the re­pub­li­can era, the Gov­ern­ment is now re­quired to have a pres­i­den­tial state­ment de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment, where­as there was no such ac­count­abil­i­ty re­quire­ment in the pre-re­pub­li­can era.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI.