Con­gress of the Peo­ple chair­man Joseph Toney says the par­ty "sup­ports gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sive ac­tion to deal with the re­cent in­crease in mur­ders in our coun­try." Toney point­ed out that the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was im­ple­ment­ed in the con­text of es­ca­lat­ing in­ci­dents of mur­der for pro­tect­ing the safe­ty and lives of the peo­ple. "A sin­gle mur­der is one too many," he said in a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day.

Toney said the COP wel­comed the lim­it­ed state of emer­gency which is "an at­tempt to route the crim­i­nal el­e­ments who are at­tempt­ing to un­der­mine so­cial safe­ty and law and or­der in our so­ci­ety. "In our view, the en­tire so­ci­ety must take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to join in the ef­fort to ar­rest the sit­u­a­tion by iden­ti­fy­ing those en­gaged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, their weapons and oth­er dan­ger­ous and il­le­gal ma­te­ri­als so that they can be re­moved from our com­mu­ni­ties," he said.