Gail Alexan­der

The state of emer­gency, and pow­ers of the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies un­der this, ap­plies to all of T&T and not on­ly the six "hot spot ar­eas", ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy. He stressed that yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Port-of-Spain. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sun­day night an­nounced a "lim­it­ed state of emer­gency" and a 9 pm to 5 am cur­few in "hot spot" ar­eas. Sandy said there had been a mis­con­cep­tion that the state of emer­gency ap­plies on­ly to the six "hot spot" ar­eas where the 9 pm to 5 am cur­few was in force. Sandy said crim­i­nal el­e­ments who would want to "mi­grate" from "hot spot" ar­eas to oth­er parts of the coun­try to avoid be­ing nabbed, should be warned that the state of emer­gency ap­plies all over T&T. He added: "So let it be known that the state of emer­gency ex­ists in the en­tire coun­try and the pow­ers giv­en to the po­lice and the mil­i­tary ex­ist in all ar­eas of T&T."

He said ar­eas out­side the "hot spots" where the cur­few ob­tained, could hold ac­tiv­i­ties be­yond 9 pm, but, he added, most seemed to be work­ing along with the cur­few times in the six "hot spots." Be­fore Sandy spoke yes­ter­day, se­nior coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal had said the state of emer­gency was not "lim­it­ed" to on­ly the six "hot spot" ar­eas since it ap­plied to all of Trinidad and To­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to the procla­ma­tion signed by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. As a re­sult, the armed forces' wide pow­ers of ar­rest, de­ten­tion and search un­der the state of emer­gency al­so ap­plied to all parts of T&T and not on­ly the six so called "hot spot" ar­eas, See­ta­hal added. She cit­ed the or­der by Pres­i­dent Richards. See­ta­hal said: "The salient point here is the Pres­i­dent's state­ment that a "state of emer­gency ex­ists in Trinidad and To­ba­go. "He did not say a 'lim­it­ed state of emer­gency' ex­ists. He said all of T&T and there­fore it means that the state of emer­gency is not lim­it­ed to the six so-called 'hot spot' ar­eas as peo­ple may feel."

See­ta­hal added: "It means that the state of emer­gency ap­plies to all of Trinidad and To­ba­go and there­fore all spe­cial pow­ers of the armed forces can be used all over T&T as well." See­ta­hal said the 9 pm to 5 am cur­few was the on­ly thing that was lim­it­ed to the six "hot spot: ar­eas in North, South and Cen­tral. See­ta­hal ex­plained that a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency ap­plied in the city of Port-of-Spain on­ly in Au­gust 1995 when the then PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in­voked that to re­move for­mer house speak­er Oc­c­ah Sea­paul. The area near Sea­paul's Mary Street, St Clair, home was cor­doned off by po­lice at that time. Op­po­si­tion PNM MP Dr Amery Browne, who said he had re­ceived sim­i­lar le­gal ad­vice, crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment on in­di­cat­ing the state of emer­gency was "lim­it­ed."

He said: "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al led the charge in try­ing to con­vince the coun­try it was a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency when in fact it is a na­tion­al state of emer­gency in all of T&T, au­tho­rised by the Pres­i­dent as re­quest­ed by the Gov­ern­ment. "So once again the Gov­ern­ment has built a foun­da­tion of lies and de­ceit to try to jus­ti­fy their ob­jec­tives and it was a de­lib­er­ate and de­ceit­ful way of in­tro­duc­ing the re­moval of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of the pub­lic." Browne said that not ad­mit­ting it was a na­tion­wide state of emer­gency was part of the PP's "modus operan­di". He added: "They should not even speak about ex­ten­sions of the sit­u­a­tion with­out prop­er­ly jus­ti­fy­ing the cur­rent one. "Par­lia­ment needs to be con­vened with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. Do not wait for 15 days to go to Par­lia­ment on this sit­u­a­tion. "The pub­lic's rep­re­sen­ta­tives must be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hold the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count for their ac­tions. "They opened the Par­lia­ment and closed it im­me­di­ate­ly right af­ter. So they must re­open it and dis­cuss all these ac­tiv­i­ties that are tak­ing place if the pri­ma­ry in­sti­tu­tion of democ­ra­cy is to be main­tained."