Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is chal­leng­ing the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide ev­i­dence that its re­peat­ed use of States of Emer­gency (SoEs) is ef­fec­tive­ly re­duc­ing crime, ar­gu­ing that cit­i­zens are be­ing asked to sup­port ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures with­out ac­cess to the da­ta need­ed to as­sess whether they are work­ing.

Speak­ing on her way to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day to de­bate a pro­posed three-month ex­ten­sion of the cur­rent SoE, Beck­les ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy and said the pub­lic de­serves greater trans­paren­cy.

She said while of­fi­cials con­tin­ue to point to re­duc­tions in crime, cit­i­zens are not be­ing pro­vid­ed with suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy those claims.

“It’s one thing for you to tell us that you have a re­duc­tion in crime, but what’s the da­ta?” she said. “The av­er­age cit­i­zen must be able to have the kind of in­for­ma­tion where, if they want to make an analy­sis, they can see how many mur­ders there have been and what is hap­pen­ing with se­ri­ous crime.”

Her com­ments come a day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s re­quest for an­oth­er ex­ten­sion of the emer­gency pow­ers, de­scrib­ing the mea­sures as tem­po­rary but nec­es­sary to re­verse what she called 25 years of vi­o­lent crime.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so ar­gued that the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to tack­ling crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

How­ev­er, Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment has failed to clear­ly ex­plain its broad­er strat­e­gy be­yond emer­gency pow­ers.

“If you say to the pub­lic that you have a plan and you are go­ing to re­duce crime, it can­not sim­ply be a State of Emer­gency,” she said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty from the Prime Min­is­ter, not­ing that Per­sad-Bisses­sar has not been reg­u­lar­ly tak­ing ques­tions from jour­nal­ists.

She ar­gued that gov­ern­ing through so­cial me­dia state­ments is not a sub­sti­tute for di­rect en­gage­ment with the pub­lic and the press.

“The Prime Min­is­ter can­not con­tin­ue this gov­er­nance by Tik­Tok and Face­book be­cause it’s not fair to the peo­ple,” she said.

Beck­les fur­ther ques­tioned claims that crime is con­cen­trat­ed in spe­cif­ic po­lit­i­cal con­stituen­cies, point­ing in­stead to re­cent mur­ders across var­i­ous parts of the coun­try.

“The truth is, look at it. Triple mur­ders right in the Prime Min­is­ter’s back­yard, dou­ble mur­der in south. Now we’re go­ing in­to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, in­to Moru­ga. Look at the num­ber of crimes tak­ing place in Cen­tral,” she said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that States of Emer­gency can be nec­es­sary in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, Beck­les ar­gued that emer­gency pow­ers should not be­come a long-term gov­ern­ing tool.

“We our­selves have had a State of Emer­gency be­fore, so we know from time to time it may be nec­es­sary,” she said. “But it can­not be that you are in gov­ern­ment for a year and more than 75 per cent of that pe­ri­od is un­der a State of Emer­gency.”

Beck­les al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of protests dur­ing the emer­gency pe­ri­od, say­ing re­stric­tions in­tro­duced un­der the reg­u­la­tions sug­gest an ad­min­is­tra­tion that is in­creas­ing­ly fear­ful of pub­lic crit­i­cism.

Young: SoE to sup­press pub­lic dis­sent

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young echoed many of those con­cerns, ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has failed to jus­ti­fy ex­tend­ing the emer­gency pow­ers.

Look­ing at the Prime Min­is­ter’s lat­est de­fence of the SoE, Young said the ar­gu­ments “fall flat” and do not pro­vide suf­fi­cient grounds for a fur­ther ex­ten­sion.

In­stead, he ar­gued that the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions have in­creas­ing­ly been used to sup­press pub­lic dis­sent rather than com­bat crime.

Young said de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties must pro­tect the right of cit­i­zens to pub­licly crit­i­cise gov­ern­ments.

“The Gov­ern­ment needs to be re­mind­ed we live in a democ­ra­cy and part of democ­ra­cy is that cit­i­zens have a right, if they are dis­sat­is­fied with the Gov­ern­ment, to voice their con­cerns,” he said.

He de­scribed the use of emer­gency pow­ers to re­strict pub­lic demon­stra­tions as un­prece­dent­ed and said the use of pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders was par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling.