Gail Alexan­der

The state of emer­gency was in­sti­tut­ed to avert a "cri­sis," which will be ful­ly aired and de­bat­ed when the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives meets next week Fri­day, ac­cord­ing to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. Ram­lo­gan in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day to re­porters when pressed to elab­o­rate on the rea­sons for the state of emer­gency and how suc­cess­ful it had been so far. Ram­lo­gan had said on Tues­day that Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards would be sub­mit­ting to House Speak­er Wade Mark a state­ment on the rea­sons for the state of emer­gency in two days' time-by to­day. Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day the Pres­i­dent's state­ment would be de­bat­ed in the Low­er House when it re­sumed next week Fri­day and that would set out the ba­sis on which the Pres­i­dent act­ed to in­voke the state of emer­gency.

Asked if the sit­ting would de­bate any or­der to ex­tend the cur­rent state of emer­gency be­yond 15 days, Mooni­lal said, "This has not been de­cid­ed yet," Yes­ter­day, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion head­ed by Dana See­ta­hal not­ed the reg­u­la­tions and pow­ers of the var­i­ous au­thor­i­ties un­der the state of emer­gency. The as­so­ci­a­tion is­sued a state­ment say­ing mem­bers ex­pect­ed that be­fore Sep­tem­ber 5 "The coun­try will be ap­prised by the au­thor­i­ties as to what has been the im­pact of these mea­sures and what is the in­ten­tion of the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing any ex­ten­sion of the state of emer­gency." Ram­lo­gan said no de­ci­sion had been tak­en on the du­ra­tion of the state of emer­gency "at this point in time."

Ram­lo­gan said the state of emer­gency was de­cid­ed up­on based on in­tel­li­gence from se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies which Gov­ern­ment could not share with the pop­u­la­tion at this time. He added: "But which I want to as­sure you avert­ed a cri­sis." Pressed on what the cri­sis was, Ram­lo­gan said, "There was an im­me­di­ate threat and en­dan­ger­ment to pub­lic safe­ty and in­no­cent cit­i­zens could have lost their lives had we not de­clared a state of emer­gency and tak­en swift and im­me­di­ate ac­tion." "More will be said about this when the Pres­i­dent's state­ment is de­bat­ed in the House," Ram­lo­gan added. He main­tained the "cri­sis" had been avert­ed by the state of emer­gency and cur­few im­posed in spe­cif­ic ar­eas.

Ear­li­er, at a me­dia brief­ing, Ram­lo­gan had not­ed that the step to­wards the state of emer­gency was pre­ced­ed by a $22 mil­lion drug bust by the au­thor­i­ties. He said: "It is not just the amount of mon­ey the drugs are worth and what the seizure rep­re­sents to the crim­i­nal en­ter­prise in­volved in that busi­ness traf­fick­ing (but) it goes deep­er." Ram­lo­gan said the po­lice were able to "stop in its tracks an en­tire drug op­er­a­tion " that used T&T as a route and trans­ship­ment point. Ram­lo­gan said the sit­u­a­tion car­ried im­pli­ca­tions con­cern­ing reprisals and the sit­u­a­tion could al­so pre­vent­ed a fur­ther $100 mil­lion of drugs com­ing in­to T&T week­ly.

Ram­lo­gan said the dis­rup­tions caused by this par­tic­u­lar drug bust and the "ram­i­fi­ca­tions down the food chain" would have been "very very heavy". On Op­po­si­tion PNM claims that the state of emer­gency was called to sti­fle labour protests, Ram­lo­gan said," We didn't need this to deal with labour protests, this is about vi­o­lent crime... no mur­ders have oc­curred since we de­clared a state of emer­gency and that's a big suc­cess in a coun­try where 11 peo­ple were mur­dered in four days."Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy al­so said yes­ter­day that "in the not too dis­tant "fu­ture "it will be re­vealed whether on­ly "small fry" were net­ted in the state of emer­gency.