Dr Kris Ram­per­sad

The fears ex­pressed in some quar­ters about the Gov­ern­ment's mo­tives in call­ing the state of emer­gency-and the claims that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to use this pe­ri­od to crack down on dis­sent-are un­jus­ti­fied giv­en the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards that are in place.For­eign­ers liv­ing in T&T, look­ing at events un­fold­ing in Libya, Syr­ia, Egypt, Bahrain-even the re­cent ri­ot­ing in Eng­land-may be­lieve that the de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of emer­gency here is a sig­nal for a se­ri­ous break­down in law and or­der.For­tu­nate­ly for the cit­i­zens of T&T and those res­i­dent here, the drafters of our 1976 Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion spent a great deal of time en­sur­ing that a de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment, faced with in­ter­nal or ex­ter­nal threats, had the pow­er to de­clare a state of emer­gency-but that there were safe­guards to en­sure that that pow­er was not abused.The main safe­guard is that the procla­ma­tion signed by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards "shall not be ef­fec­tive" un­less it con­tains a de­c­la­ra­tion that the Pres­i­dent was sat­is­fied that some per­son or per­sons took ac­tion, or threat­ened ac­tion, "of such a na­ture and on so ex­ten­sive a scale as to be like­ly to en­dan­ger the pub­lic safe­ty or to de­prive the com­mu­ni­ty or any sub­stan­tial por­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty of sup­plies or ser­vices es­sen­tial to life."Be­fore he signed the procla­ma­tion, the Pres­i­dent would have sat­is­fied him­self that the pub­lic safe­ty was suf­fi­cient­ly en­dan­gered or that the com­mu­ni­ty was in sub­stan­tial threat of be­ing de­prived of es­sen­tial sup­plies or ser­vices.

The sec­ond con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guard af­ford­ed the pub­lic is the fact that "with­in three days of the mak­ing of the procla­ma­tion, the Pres­i­dent shall de­liv­er to the Speak­er for pre­sen­ta­tion to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives a state­ment set­ting out the spe­cif­ic grounds on which the de­ci­sion to de­clare the ex­is­tence of a state of pub­lic emer­gency was based."The Con­sti­tu­tion not on­ly en­sures that the rea­sons be­hind the de­c­la­ra­tion of the state of emer­gency must be well known with­in days of its im­ple­men­ta­tion, there is al­so a pro­vi­sion for the Speak­er to fix a date for a de­bate on the state­ment pro­vid­ed by the Pres­i­dent "not lat­er than fif­teen days from the date of the procla­ma­tion."If the Con­sti­tu­tion man­dates a par­lia­men­tary fo­rum for a free and frank de­bate on the rea­sons for call­ing the state of emer­gency, then a gov­ern­ment that caused the de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of emer­gency for friv­o­lous and vex­a­tious rea­sons would cer­tain­ly be risk­ing its cred­i­bil­i­ty.The Con­sti­tu­tion en­vis­ages that in a state of emer­gency peo­ple would be law­ful­ly de­tained by virtue of the State of Emer­gency Reg­u­la­tions.But the Con­sti­tu­tion al­so re­quires that the Chief Jus­tice would ap­point a tri­bunal that must be both "in­de­pen­dent and im­par­tial" which would re­view the cir­cum­stances of the de­ten­tion of peo­ple dur­ing the state of emer­gency.The Con­sti­tu­tion al­so gives the tri­bunal ap­point­ed by the Chief Jus­tice the abil­i­ty to re­view the case of any de­tained per­son and "make rec­om­men­da­tions con­cern­ing the ne­ces­si­ty or ex­pe­di­en­cy of con­tin­u­ing his de­ten­tion to the au­thor­i­ty."The Chief Jus­tice must ap­point the mem­bers of tri­bunal from among the per­sons en­ti­tled to prac­tise in Trinidad and To­ba­go as bar­ris­ters or so­lic­i­tors.The fears ex­pressed are not jus­ti­fied giv­en the ro­bust­ness of the con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards as they per­tain to the call­ing of the state of emer­gency.