Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase

“ ... the right of the in­di­vid­ual to life, lib­er­ty, se­cu­ri­ty of the per­son and en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty and the right not to be de­prived there­of ex­cept by due process of law.”

—Sec­tion 4(a) of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go

It has been one year since Mari­ah Seenath was mur­dered, just min­utes from her home. Her fam­i­ly has not for­got­ten her. Many oth­ers are still liv­ing with the ef­fects of mur­ders, rob­beries and home in­va­sions. Sad­ly, we are a coun­try that mourn for a day or two and then back to lim­ing and fet­ing and life goes on. Per­son­al­ly, I can­not re­mem­ber when last I did not have to think about se­cu­ri­ty—not just my­self but the peo­ple I love. And to be hon­est, I don’t know any­one who isn’t wor­ried about their safe­ty. I think that many peo­ple, law-abid­ing and hard-work­ing cit­i­zens are al­ready not free to move around, to go out at night alone or to en­ter some ar­eas.

As we cel­e­brate Re­pub­lic Day, I want to re­vis­it the whole de­bate on the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill which was re­cent­ly passed in the House. Be­ing a Re­pub­lic means that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de­ci­sions about our coun­try rests with us. Our Con­sti­tu­tion recog­nis­es the right to life, lib­er­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the per­son, as well as free­dom of move­ment. So, when we have hit record high mur­der rates and crime is out of hand, then we must de­cide what to do about it. We have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to use our in­tel­lect and come up with ideas to help our­selves. But we must al­so ask whether those ideas pro­tect the rights of the peo­ple they are meant to make safer.

I can on­ly imag­ine how frus­trat­ing it must be to lead a coun­try when every at­tempt to tack­le crime is framed through pol­i­tics and race. When the Prime Min­is­ter said she would au­tho­rise spe­cial op­er­a­tions on­ly in UNC ar­eas, I won­dered if that came from a place of frus­tra­tion or if she was just be­ing prac­ti­cal. Sure­ly you can’t help peo­ple who don’t want to help them­selves.

But still, what about the peo­ple liv­ing in PNM con­stituen­cies who gen­uine­ly want a safer life? They too are cit­i­zens of this Re­pub­lic. We can­not as­sume that an MP’s op­po­si­tion to a mea­sure speaks for every res­i­dent of that con­stituen­cy. How then do we al­low them to voice their opin­ions?

Much of the dis­cus­sion on so­cial me­dia cen­tres on a pos­si­ble loss of free­dom. I feel like I have to re­mind peo­ple that many of us are al­ready not free to move around parts of T&T. As a woman, I now think twice about where and when I go. In 1996, when I was placed as a teacher at Mal­ick Sec­ondary Com­pre­hen­sive, I trav­elled in­to Co­conut Dri­ve. Some­times the taxi would go to oth­er ar­eas to drop off pas­sen­gers, to Nev­er Dirty and else­where, and back then I did not think twice about it. I nev­er felt afraid.

To­day, I know peo­ple who can­not even move out of their streets be­cause they would be seen as out­siders and thus, at risk. This is just one ex­am­ple. There are many ar­eas through­out T&T where “out­siders” are at risk. These in­clude work­ers with pub­lic util­i­ties and ser­vice providers. There are ar­eas where am­bu­lance dri­vers have to be ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice of­fi­cers. So what free­dom are we afraid will be cur­tailed if and when the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill will come in­to ef­fect? And whose free­dom are we talk­ing about?

Sad­ly, it will be a case of ‘Pe­ter pay for Paul’ be­cause in many crime hotspots there are in­no­cent cit­i­zens whose move­ments are cur­tailed be­cause of the few crim­i­nal ones. But here’s the thing, if Pe­ter al­ready can’t move around freely and is al­ready at a risk, then maybe some hard ac­tion will bring some changes? Shouldn’t we con­sid­er whether ef­fec­tive ac­tion could change his life?

The oth­er thing is if the Op­po­si­tion has an is­sue with these mea­sures, what al­ter­na­tives is it sug­gest­ing? The last gov­ern­ment was un­able to get a grip on crime and the mur­der rate reached record lev­els. That makes it even hard­er for me to un­der­stand an out­right re­jec­tion with­out a work­able pro­pos­al. I keep say­ing that or­di­nary cit­i­zens do not have the se­cu­ri­ty that many MPs have. They can make a phone call and the po­lice would be by their doors but or­di­nary cit­i­zens don’t have that lux­u­ry. They need their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to tell us what they would do to make their com­mu­ni­ties safer.

Be­cause I know what I want. I want to move freely and to feel safe here in my beau­ti­ful coun­try. Be­ing a re­pub­lic means that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our fu­ture rests with us. That re­spon­si­bil­i­ty shouldn’t de­pend on which par­ty won in which area. We elect lead­ers to pro­tect every cit­i­zen, re­gard­less of which par­ty rep­re­sents them. We need to know that the Re­pub­lic of T&T will pro­tect all of us.

Hap­py Re­pub­lic Day, T&T.