Gail Alexan­der

The tra­di­tion­al In­de­pen­dence night fire­works has been can­celled due to the state of emer­gency cur­few, ac­cord­ing to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy. At a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Sandy said In­de­pen­dence pa­rades will con­tin­ue as usu­al on Au­gust 31 for the coun­try's 49th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence. "How­ev­er," he added, "be­cause of con­cerns re­gard­ing peo­ple re­turn­ing home on time we have can­celled the fire­works dis­play." In­de­pen­dence fire­works are usu­al­ly held in sev­er­al venues around T&T-in­clud­ing Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do-two of the six "hot spots" where cur­fews are in ef­fect.

Sandy's state­ment con­cern­ing next Wednes­day's In­de­pen­dence fire­works was an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion that the state of emer­gency may last be­yond a week. Gov­ern­ment sources had pro­ject­ed on Mon­day that it might not last as long as the 15 days ini­tial­ly in­di­cat­ed. At yes­ter­day's me­dia brief­ing, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment could ob­tain two ex­ten­sions of the state of emer­gency for three-month pe­ri­ods, up to a max­i­mum of six months. He said that could be ob­tained with a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote in Par­lia­ment. Ram­lo­gan said Sen­ate votes would not be need­ed for that.

But any fur­ther ex­ten­sions af­ter those two, he said, would re­quire a spe­cial three-fifth's ma­jor­i­ty in­volv­ing Op­po­si­tion PNM sup­port. Ram­lo­gan said that by to­mor­row Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards would present a for­mal state­ment to House Speak­er Wade Mark out­lin­ing the ba­sis for the state of emer­gency.

He said that was a con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ment and would be a pri­vate sub­mis­sion and would not re­quire a Par­lia­ment ses­sion. Op­po­si­tion leader Kei­th Row­ley -or oth­er PNM MPs-were not avail­able to say if the Op­po­si­tion would sup­port any fur­ther ex­ten­sions. PNM chief whip Mar­lene Mc Don­ald had said on Mon­day Row­ley was in To­ba­go.