JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

A mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for a sec­ond time was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day with 27 Gov­ern­ment votes in favour and 12 Op­po­si­tion votes against. There were no ab­sten­tions.

The ap­proval grants the Gov­ern­ment an ad­di­tion­al three months of en­hanced emer­gency pow­ers, de­spite fierce ob­jec­tions from the Op­po­si­tion bench­es.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who pi­lot­ed the mo­tion, in­sist­ed the SoE re­mained a crit­i­cal na­tion­al-se­cu­ri­ty in­stru­ment to sup­port ac­tive op­er­a­tions tar­get­ing crim­i­nal gangs and or­gan­ised crime net­works.

He stressed that the mea­sure was nev­er in­tend­ed to serve as the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy, but rather as a tem­po­rary plat­form en­abling law en­force­ment agen­cies to ex­e­cute sen­si­tive and on­go­ing tac­ti­cal ini­tia­tives.

He not­ed a de­cline in mur­ders since the SoE was de­clared, though not its pri­ma­ry pur­pose, sig­nalled dis­rup­tion across crim­i­nal land­scapes.

Port-of-Spain South MP, Kei­th Scot­land, lead­ing the re­sponse on the Op­po­si­tion bench, con­demned the re­quest for the ex­ten­sion, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing to present da­ta or mean­ing­ful ev­i­dence to jus­ti­fy the move. He charged that the SoE was in­stead be­ing used to “mask in­com­pe­tence and in­ef­fi­cien­cies” in crime man­age­ment and ar­gued that the pop­u­la­tion de­served trans­paren­cy.

But Je­re­mie pushed back, as­sert­ing that re­veal­ing op­er­a­tional de­tails would com­pro­mise sen­si­tive in­tel­li­gence, risk na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ef­forts, and en­dan­ger se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel.

In wind­ing up the de­bate, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­it­er­at­ed that se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials “need time to build on their ini­tial suc­cess­es” and warned that pre­ma­ture­ly lift­ing the SoE could stall mo­men­tum and al­low crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions to re­group.

With the mo­tion now ap­proved, the ex­tend­ed emer­gency pow­ers will re­main in ef­fect, pend­ing re­view at the end of the next three-month pe­ri­od.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment would be seek­ing to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency by an­oth­er three months on Ian Al­leyne’s Crime Watch pro­gramme.

The SoE was ini­tial­ly called on Ju­ly 18 and an­nounced by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro.

It was re­vealed that the SoE was de­clared based on the emer­gence of a high­ly threat­en­ing crim­i­nal net­work that was op­er­a­tional both with­in and out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s prison fa­cil­i­ties.

The net­work was re­port­ed­ly plan­ning “as­sas­si­na­tions, rob­beries, and kid­nap­pings” even against gov­ern­ment and state of­fi­cials.

Days lat­er, on Ju­ly 28, the Par­lia­ment vot­ed to ex­tend the SoE un­til the end of Oc­to­ber.