Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are seek­ing to clar­i­fy that the State of Emer­gency (SoE), which is ex­pect­ed to be ex­tend­ed in Par­lia­ment to­day, is un­re­lat­ed to re­cent diplo­mat­ic ten­sions be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion is prepar­ing to re­quest a fur­ther three-month ex­ten­sion of the SoE, which was first de­clared on Ju­ly 18, re­newed on Ju­ly 28, and ex­pired on Wednes­day.

Since its de­c­la­ra­tion, sev­er­al in­mates have been re­lo­cat­ed from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca to a fa­cil­i­ty in Ch­aguara­mas, along with oth­ers held un­der de­ten­tion or­ders.

At yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers re­ject­ed spec­u­la­tion that the ex­ten­sion was con­nect­ed to re­gion­al in­sta­bil­i­ty fol­low­ing re­cent US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean or Venezuela’s con­cerns over the vis­it of the USS Grave­ly to Port-of-Spain.

“In terms of any­thing to do with Venezuela and Trinidad and it be­ing teth­ered to the SoE, that does not arise at all,” Sobers said.

He added that the mea­sure has pro­duced “demon­stra­tive and mea­sur­able de­creas­es in crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

How­ev­er, Sobers de­clined to con­firm whether the ini­tial threat that trig­gered the emer­gency—in­tel­li­gence point­ing to a so­phis­ti­cat­ed crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing from with­in the prison sys­tem and tar­get­ing gov­ern­ment and state of­fi­cials—had been ful­ly ad­dressed.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to reach sev­er­al key gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials for com­ment, in­clud­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, who were not present at the brief­ing.

“It is un­for­tu­nate, I sus­pect, that as mem­bers of the me­dia you come here some­times and may not be able to ques­tion a par­tic­u­lar min­is­ter on a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject,” Sobers said. “But I’m cer­tain you know where their min­istries are, and you have our tele­phone num­bers. From time to time we do re­spond.”

Calls and mes­sages to the three min­is­ters went unan­swered up to press time.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is ex­pect­ed to pi­lot the mo­tion in Par­lia­ment to­day and pro­vide de­tails on the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the ex­ten­sion.

“In terms of what the SoE was set up for in the first place, there’s in­for­ma­tion that rests with cer­tain se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies that will treat with the need for the ex­ten­sion,” Sobers added.

When asked if the orig­i­nal threat had been neu­tralised, Sobers de­ferred: “We need to speak to the AG and the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.”

On Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Crime Watch that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice had rec­om­mend­ed the SoE’s ex­ten­sion to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. The mo­tion does not re­quire op­po­si­tion sup­port to pass.

Gov­ern­ment sources in­di­cat­ed that the ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od could run in­to ear­ly 2026—like­ly end­ing in Jan­u­ary—mark­ing the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive SoE to over­lap with a Car­ni­val sea­son. This year’s SoE cov­ered the March fes­tiv­i­ties, while the up­com­ing one would con­clude short­ly be­fore Car­ni­val 2026, sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 16 and 17. — Da­reece Po­lo