KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment is now look­ing to in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to sup­port the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) bill af­ter it was re­ject­ed by all Op­po­si­tion Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (MPs) present for the vote in the Low­er House on Fri­day.

The bill will be de­bat­ed in the Up­per House to­mor­row (Tues­day). It re­quires a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty to be passed.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing held at Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said, “The bill will be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate on Tues­day, in earnest, and will pass with the sup­port of four of the nine pres­i­den­tial sen­a­tors. At least one mem­ber of the House on Fri­day made it clear that the Op­po­si­tion PNM will lob­by the pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors to not lend the re­quired sup­port.”

Mean­while, Sturge rub­bished claims that the Gov­ern­ment’s new crime-fight­ing tac­tic is an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Ac­cord­ing to him, ZOSOs does not have the same sweep­ing pow­ers as an SoE. 

He ex­plained that po­lice would not be able to lock down every­one in a hot spot, nor ar­rest who­ev­er they want. 

“There are pro­vi­sions in the bill which al­low for ar­eas with­in the zone to be the sub­ject of a cor­don for a max­i­mum of 24 hours and for a cur­few to be im­posed with­in the cor­don for a max­i­mum of 72 hours,” he said.

The Min­is­ter added that op­er­a­tions would on­ly tar­get peo­ple and premis­es who are sub­ject to rea­son­able sus­pi­cion.

He said, “Con­trary to the patent non­sense be­ing pub­lished by some PM-af­fil­i­at­ed so­cial me­dia blog­gers, not all per­sons with­in the zone or the cor­don would be sub­ject to ar­bi­trary ar­rest, de­ten­tion or search of their per­sons or prop­er­ty. Where cor­dons and cur­fews are im­posed, op­er­a­tions will be sur­gi­cal and time­ly and would tar­get on­ly those per­sons and premis­es who are the sub­ject of what we call in law rea­son­able sus­pi­cion, which is a safe­guard.”

He al­so strong­ly re­ject­ed claims that the bill would be used to tar­get spe­cif­ic racial groups.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Sturge said when it comes to the is­sue of ar­rests with­out war­rants, it is based on rea­son­able sus­pi­cion, and peo­ple must be brought be­fore the court prompt­ly.

He added, “The pow­er of ar­rest with­out war­rant al­ready ex­ists both in statute and at com­mon law. The pro­vi­sions deal­ing with ar­rest and de­ten­tion have four safe­guards in this Bill. First­ly, the ar­rest is based on rea­son­able sus­pi­cion. It is not ar­bi­trary. And rea­son­able sus­pi­cion would main­ly be dri­ven by in­tel­li­gence. The pro­vi­sions deal­ing with ar­rest and de­ten­tion have four safe­guards, as I said. Rea­son­able sus­pi­cion is one. Sec­ond one is that the bill pro­vides that a per­son ar­rest­ed and de­tained must be brought be­fore a court prompt­ly.”

How­ev­er, al­so speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les stood by his view that the Gov­ern­ment al­ways in­tend­ed to use an SoE to tack­le crime be­cause it has no oth­er plans.

“The Gov­ern­ment in­tends for that law (ZOSOs) to come in­to ef­fect up­on the ex­pi­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency as one of their crime fight­ing tools, all right, and that is ev­i­dence to me, or for me, as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this the­o­ry that the Gov­ern­ment lied to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go by com­ing up with a sto­ry to de­clare a State of Emer­gency in Trinidad and To­ba­go ... be­cause they had no oth­er plan to do so.”

The present SoE, which was de­clared in Ju­ly 2025, will ex­pire on Jan­u­ary 31.