Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has warned that she will not hes­i­tate to de­clare an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE) if se­ri­ous threats to the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens re-emerge.

The SoE end­ed at mid­night on Thurs­day, fol­low­ing sev­er­al months of emer­gency mea­sures aimed at tack­ling se­ri­ous crime and gang ac­tiv­i­ty.

Since the UNC-led Gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice in April 2025, two states of emer­gency have been de­clared.

The first was de­clared on Ju­ly 18, 2025, tak­ing ef­fect just af­ter mid­night. It was sub­se­quent­ly ex­tend­ed twice be­fore end­ing on Jan­u­ary 31, 2026.

A sec­ond SoE was de­clared on March 3, 2026, fol­low­ing what the Gov­ern­ment de­scribed as cred­i­ble threats of at­tacks against law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lat­est warn­ing came af­ter the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing. The leg­is­la­tion es­tab­lish­es sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts across Trinidad and To­ba­go and cre­ates a frame­work for spe­cial op­er­a­tions to com­bat crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

With­in those dis­tricts, spe­cif­ic lo­ca­tions can be de­clared “closed ar­eas,” where en­hanced law en­force­ment pow­ers can be ex­er­cised for lim­it­ed pe­ri­ods.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the leg­is­la­tion will next be con­sid­ered by the Sen­ate and is ex­pect­ed to be passed with­out amend­ments.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed SoE had re­sult­ed in 3,552 peo­ple be­ing charged, which she de­scribed as a high­ly suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tion.

She said the pas­sage of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill would pro­vide an­oth­er mech­a­nism to deal with threats to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, but stressed that her Gov­ern­ment would be pre­pared to in­voke emer­gency pow­ers if nec­es­sary.

“How­ev­er, if se­ri­ous threats to the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens re-emerge, I will not hes­i­tate to put the coun­try un­der an­oth­er SoE,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so is­sued a di­rect warn­ing to crim­i­nal gangs and the il­le­gal drug trade, say­ing those in­volved in vi­o­lent crime could again face de­ten­tion at fa­cil­i­ties in­clud­ing Teteron and the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP).

“I want the lo­cal drug mafia and the vi­o­lent gangs to un­der­stand clear­ly that the cells at Teteron and MSP await again if you con­tin­ue your crim­i­nal be­hav­iour,” she said.

She ac­cused crim­i­nal el­e­ments of hav­ing “tor­tured and ter­rorised” law-abid­ing cit­i­zens for three decades and said this sit­u­a­tion must come to an end.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so sharply crit­i­cised the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), along with com­men­ta­tors and oth­er groups who have raised con­cerns about the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er in the day af­ter the PNM crit­i­cised the leg­is­la­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of sid­ing with crim­i­nal in­ter­ests.

“The PNM wants a crim­i­nal state so the West­moor­ings, Fed­er­a­tion Park, St Clair and oth­er gangs can flood com­mu­ni­ties with il­le­gal drugs and guns. The PNM acts like a mouth­piece for drug traf­fick­ers and crim­i­nals in and out Par­lia­ment,” she said.

“They have no care for the suf­fer­ing of their own sup­port­ers. Law-abid­ing cit­i­zens sup­port the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill. I’m not both­ered about the com­plaints from drug lords and their min­ions.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so dou­bled down on her crit­i­cism of the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors. This comes af­ter she claimed in Jan­u­ary that two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors sought per­son­al favours in ex­change for sup­port­ing the ZOSO Bill.

While she did not iden­ti­fy them by name, she said the iden­ti­ties of the two sen­a­tors were known through­out the Sen­ate and strong­ly crit­i­cised their mo­tives.

“The en­tire Sen­ate knows who the two per­sons are. They both have be­come laugh­ing­stocks in the Sen­ate. The bill will pass in the Sen­ate next week with­out amend­ments,” she said.

“If the Pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors want to dic­tate leg­is­la­tion, they should fight elec­tions to earn that right. I have no re­gard for those dead­beats. They’re on­ly there for self-pro­mo­tion and ad­vance­ment of their scum­my per­son­al am­bi­tions.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her ad­min­is­tra­tion would con­tin­ue to act in what it con­sid­ers to be the best in­ter­ests of cit­i­zens.

“My Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to work in the best in­ter­ests of our cit­i­zens,” she said.