Is Trinidad and To­ba­go be­com­ing a po­lice state? The Emer­gency Pow­ers (Pro­hi­bi­tion of Pub­lic Protests and Demon­stra­tions) Or­der has iden­ti­fied 15 “no-protest zones,” in­clud­ing in front of the Par­lia­ment, un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE). Protests seek to get the at­ten­tion of gov­ern­ment and state lead­er­ship. The dis­placed protests will cer­tain­ly di­min­ish their ef­fec­tive­ness.

Are civ­il lib­er­ties be­ing cur­tailed? Or are our politi­cians at a height­ened risk of at­tack than ever be­fore? Are threats ex­pect­ed to emerge from the usu­al pub­lic gath­er­ings? Or is this a mere ex­cuse to ex­tend the SoE for an­oth­er three months? Was the heavy po­lice pres­ence at last week’s protest for Ka­ia Sealy, with mul­ti­ple ar­rests, the overkill de­sired to jus­ti­fy the in­state­ment of “no-protest zones”?

While con­duct­ing per­son­al busi­ness in the cap­i­tal last week, I over­heard con­ver­sa­tions of dis­ap­proval and dis­gust with the po­lice for those ac­tions. Last week, PNM sen­a­tor Lar­ry Lal­la con­sid­ered the or­der an ero­sion of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to “free­dom of thought and ex­pres­sion” amongst oth­ers. So­ca artiste Nailah Black­man added her voice to the con­ver­sa­tion, call­ing for jus­tice and em­pa­thy.

Per­haps re­cent­ly ap­point­ed WASA per­son­nel Chris­tine “Twig­gy” Levia, Matara French and Stark Grimes could be de­ployed amongst them to “pour wa­ter” on the fire.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­cent­ly shared Gre­nier’s quote re­fer­ring to “rough men” and their readi­ness for “vi­o­lence” as a means for main­tain­ing peace. She went on to flag “the PNM’s pro­mo­tion of law­less­ness, hos­til­i­ty to­wards law en­force­ment, racist in­vec­tive, crim­i­nal gang pro­pa­gan­da and mob in­tim­i­da­tion tac­tics.” Has the PNM so ex­ploit­ed the Ka­ia Sealy mat­ter? The PM would have in­for­ma­tion not avail­able to the av­er­age cit­i­zen, but even so, could she have cho­sen to urge calm and to al­low for the law to take its course?

The three de­tained pro­test­ers were re­leased on their own bail and will have their court hear­ing to­day. Last Fri­day, an­oth­er protest sprang up, this time a “silent demon­stra­tion” which a heavy po­lice de­ploy­ment di­vert­ed away from the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre to Long Cir­cu­lar Road.

Maxi taxi op­er­a­tors in­di­cat­ed that they were go­ing to pause their op­er­a­tions na­tion­wide from to­day due to re­cent re­stric­tions and fees, which have had dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects.

The TTPS and the Gov­ern­ment need to be wary of the “mar­tyrs” they cre­ate. Some of these ac­tions re­mind me of the “BLM” move­ment, which start­ed with per­ceived ex­ces­sive force by the po­lice. A per­ni­cious rec­ol­lec­tion of “mar­tyr­dom” for a UNC gov­ern­ment would be when we vot­ed to sus­pend then op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley from Par­lia­ment in May of 2015 due to “Email­gate.” He rode that mar­tyr­dom straight in­to the PM’s chair just four months lat­er.

The PSA has al­so re­ject­ed Gov­ern­ment’s “best and fi­nal of­fer” to set­tle their back­pay. The PSA sup­port­ed the UNC dur­ing GE2025 and got its 10% in­crease. The com­plete pay­ment is still out­stand­ing. What hap­pens next? Are the “no-protest zones” meant to keep all and sundry at bay?

The ex­act val­ue to WASA of the re­cent hir­ing of cer­tain so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers is un­cer­tain. Some won­der if it is pay­back from the UNC for their help dur­ing GE2025. Will their con­tent now fo­cus on WASA ac­tiv­i­ties like prompt road patch­ing af­ter pipe re­pairs or wa­ter con­ser­va­tion skits? They will now be ac­cused of “singing for their sup­per,” hav­ing dropped the guise of their un­re­mu­ner­at­ed choice to sup­port the UNC. Per­haps this UNC Gov­ern­ment will say WASA is get­ting more so­cial me­dia val­ue than the NL­CB got from hir­ing Rho­da Bharath un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment? I want to know how many votes each per­son­al­i­ty would have ac­tu­al­ly net­ted. They are now spent shells ahead of LGE 2027 and GE 2030, though.

I must tell you that when UNC sup­port­ers feel ne­glect­ed, they re­mem­ber that AG John Je­re­mie, Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh, and Min­is­ter Phillip Watts left the PNM to vault in­to a UNC cab­i­net, and these gen­tle­men are yet to de­liv­er won­drous things to the na­tion or the UNC that could not have been de­liv­ered by a born-and-bred “UNC.”

From the mul­ti­ple ap­point­ments for cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als to the low­er lev­el “WASA type” hires, dif­fer­ent groups ran­kle. Thou­sands of UNC sup­port­ers ac­tu­al­ly did re­al ground­work to se­cure their par­ty’s vic­to­ry. They are the foot sol­diers of the par­ty who worked for the UNC’s coali­tion of in­ter­ests and who to­day are still wait­ing to ben­e­fit in some form or fash­ion from their par­ty be­ing in Gov­ern­ment. They ex­pect­ed “…every­body wins” to in­clude them. They now hold the hope that “bet­ter days are com­ing.”

From my ex­pe­ri­ence as a win­ning UNC can­di­date in 2010 and 2015, you have to give back to your sup­port­ers first! I have been hear­ing more and more about a dif­fer­ent modus operan­di. I have re­ceived hun­dreds of un­so­licit­ed com­plaints from fel­low par­ty mem­bers about their frus­tra­tion with the lack of help on var­i­ous nor­mal con­stituent is­sues from their MPs. Re­gard­ing the hir­ing of Twig­gy, Matara, Stark et al, UNC sup­port­ers have no prob­lem with them “get­ting a wuk.” The prob­lem is that they vault­ed thou­sands of qual­i­fied, loy­al, long-stand­ing UNC sup­port­ers, like sev­er­al be­fore them.