Trinidad and Tobago’s Parliament Monday night unanimously gave the green light to extend the state of emergency (SOE) by a further three months as the government and opposition traded words as to who is responsible for the significant number of murders in the country.
Legislators had, earlier during the day, “taken note” of the decision of the President Christine Kangaloo to declare the SOE on December 30 last year, even as Opposition Leader Kamla Persad Bissessar questioned the timing of the measure to curb criminal activity and called for fresh general elections.
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But as he piloted the motion seeking a three-month extension of the SOE, Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley said that the 15-day period since the measure had been put in place was not sufficient to have had a genuine impact on the crime situation.
“It is too early to say that it has been successful,” he told legislators.
“We have given them additional support from the (Trinidad and Tobago) Defense Force, we are covering more ground, we are spending more time interrogating suspects, we are spending more time and need to spend more time converting information to evidence and we are, in fact, spending time hopefully detaining the deadly to reduce their ability to rain death and destruction on the innocent and the law-abiding,” Rowley said, adding “Madame Speaker, we need more time”.
Rowley defended the decision of his administration to impose the SOE after years of not doing so, insisting however that at no time did he ever say he was never going to declare a SOE.
But as he has maintained in the past, the imposition of a curfew was not something he would support given its toll on small and medium-sized businesses.
The prime minister brushed aside the argument made by Persad Bissessar that since coming to office in 2015, the Rowley administration has been responsible for more than 5,000 deaths.
“If one takes that statement logically, then I would say that the member for Siparia is responsible for 2,435 deaths,” Rowley said, no doubt in reference to Persad Bissessar led People’s Partnership government from 2010-2015.
He also disputed Persad Bissessar’s claim that had the SOE been declared sooner, lives would have been saved, describing the statement as mere “conjecture”.
“Nobody knows what life would have been saved and when you look at the numbers, the SOE of 2011 did not put an end to the behavior of criminals,” he said, adding that it is also not so simple to accuse the government of taking too long to utilize a state of emergency.
Rowley said crime was a serious matter which was not going to go away by “just pointing fingers at one another”.
“The criminals know as long as we are doing that, they have the edge. They know that as long as we see them as victims they have the edge and they have no sympathy for us, the law-abiding,” Dr Rowley said.
The government also dismissed suggestions by opposition legislator, Saddam Hosein that the SOE brought with it the same regulations already existing in other laws, such as the firearms act, and that the measures are nothing more than an election gimmick given that polls are to be held this year.
But Energy Minister, Stuart Young, who served as acting attorney general when the SOE was first announced, told parliament, “When someone reads the regulations, you will see in accordance with emergency powers where we are suspending certain constitutional rights, the regulations are providing for the police to have wider, quicker use of powers. Search and stop, search and seize without warrants.”
“So do not come here and try to restrict the ability of the police in very limited circumstances, under a last resort SOE, from being given the powers to do what they need to do to make all of us law-abiding citizens that much safer. These powers do not exist in the existing legislation, the Firearms Act, the Anti-Gang Act, etc…,” he added.
