JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

With a di­vi­sion of 27 Gov­ern­ment MPs for and 11 Op­po­si­tion MPs against, the Law Re­form Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures Act, 2026, was passed in the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment.

The in­tend­ed law would give Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar the pow­er to de­clare spec­i­fied zones to be heav­i­ly po­liced on the ad­vice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Chief of De­fence Staff.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar would be able to des­ig­nate spe­cial zones in ar­eas where there are “rea­son­able grounds” to be­lieve crim­i­nal­i­ty, gang vi­o­lence, or threats to pub­lic or­der are wide­spread.

The aim, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the bill on Fri­day night, is to re­store the rule of law.

“We do the dif­fi­cult things pre­cise­ly be­cause they are dif­fi­cult and hard and be­cause they need to be done. It is not go­ing to be easy to fix this coun­try, to turn this coun­try around from a decade of cozy­ing up to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in every in­sti­tu­tion of the State.”

He added that the bill does not seek to mar­gin­alise any mem­ber of so­ci­ety, as that was not and is not the in­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the bill should be sent to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee as he fore­sees dan­gers in it. He said the Ja­maican mod­el, which the bill fol­lows, had re­ports of abuse of pow­ers by law en­force­ment, with that coun­try’s gov­ern­ment hav­ing to make 17 amend­ments from when it was first im­ple­ment­ed in 2017.

Echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of his Op­po­si­tion col­league, Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle, Young said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment con­sid­ered bring­ing sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment while in gov­ern­ment, but that was re­ject­ed, and he was key to that. “We felt that it was not pro­por­tion­al, and I per­son­al­ly was one of the main ad­vo­cates against it, and the rea­son is a sim­ple one. I do not be­lieve that we should sus­pend per­sons’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights when we have suf­fi­cient laws on the books.”

Mar­celle ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of play­ing “Christo­pher Colum­bus” with the re­ject­ed leg­is­la­tion. He said there was an ad­just­ment from 60 days to 180 days for the zones to be im­ple­ment­ed.

“I can say, with­out a shad­ow of a doubt, Madam Deputy Speak­er, that it was non­sense then and it is non­sense now. It was dan­ger­ous then, and it is dan­ger­ous now.”

He read from a US State De­part­ment Hu­man Rights 2021 re­port on the law in Ja­maica, which spoke of an in­crease in fa­tal po­lice killings. He not­ed that the re­port not­ed that in 2020, there were 115 fa­tal shoot­ings and 123 the fol­low­ing year, with many de­lays in pros­e­cut­ing the mat­ters.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der crit­i­cised the Op­po­si­tion, say­ing that when he was a po­lice of­fi­cer, they failed to arm law en­force­ment with the need­ed leg­is­la­tion to tack­le crime. He high­light­ed that the first joint po­lice and army pa­trols be­gan in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion, where Mar­celle and Kei­th Scot­land are Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment. He said a sim­i­lar piece of leg­is­la­tion worked in Ja­maica, Be­lize, and Ecuador in re­duc­ing se­ri­ous crimes.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge de­nied that the bill would be used as a tool to racial­ly vic­timise cit­i­zens. He said many cit­i­zens al­ready live in a self-im­posed cur­few and rub­bished the Op­po­si­tion’s claims that the law was un­fair.