Shal­iza Has­sanali

For­mer deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Robert May­ers has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for ap­proach­ing the state of emer­gency the wrong way. Though May­ers sup­ports the move by Gov­ern­ment to im­pose a 9 pm to 5 am cur­few in six ar­eas to weed out the crim­i­nal el­e­ments, he felt the ap­proach by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy and CoP Dwayne Gibbs left much to be de­sired. "My ex­pec­ta­tion is that if you have in­tel­li­gence, you would first lock down the hot spot ar­eas, us­ing the army and po­lice and then an­nounce a state of emer­gency. This was not done."

In­stead, May­ers, who is still a mem­ber of the COP, said Per­sad-Biss­esar had put the cart be­fore the horse. By do­ing this, May­ers said it gave the crim­i­nals enough time to get away from the drag­net. "I am not sure they know what they are do­ing. I found that to be quite cu­ri­ous. This should have been their weapon of sur­prise." May­ers said the way the Gov­ern­ment was han­dling the sit­u­a­tion has not in­spired con­fi­dence in the pub­lic. "There are so many sto­ries be­ing spun. I re­al­ly don't know. It is not in­spir­ing con­fi­dence and that is the prob­lem." To com­pound mat­ters, May­ers said there was still a lack of pub­lic trust in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice. "If there are bad eggs in the po­lice ser­vice how do you get rid of them be­cause they now have ex­tra pow­ers? The bad eggs have the same pow­ers as the oth­ers. How do you deal with that?"

He in­sist­ed that the po­lice ser­vice need­ed to be cleansed. "I don't get much com­fort by the fact that there are a few bad eggs. Get them out. If I have to use a state of emer­gency to do it I will do it." May­ers said he was of the firm be­lief that Sandy was not do­ing much. He al­so felt that some peo­ple oc­cu­py­ing Gov­ern­ment of­fices are not fit. "That is my own view." Stat­ing that it was too ear­ly to say if the lock down would re­duce crime and drugs in the coun­try, May­ers said peo­ple have not been op­ti­mistic that the mea­sures tak­en will yield any­thing tan­gi­ble.

May­ers said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion should not have dis­band­ed the Spe­cial An­ti Crime Unit (SAUTT). Even though the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment han­dled SAUTT one way, May­ers said the Prime Min­is­ter could have main­tained the unit but man­aged it dif­fer­ent­ly. "Hope­ful­ly that could have al­lowed them to put their forces in the place when a state of emer­gency was de­clared. It would have nabbed who need­ed to be nabbed even if they didn't have jus­ti­cia­ble ev­i­dence to take them to court."

May­ers ques­tioned how long T&T can con­tin­ue with a sate of emer­gency and cur­few, stat­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, main­ly restau­rants, ho­tels and bars were buck­ling un­der pres­sure from poor sales. "To con­tin­ue with a state of emer­gency would be mad­ness, but it is an op­tion that they have." May­ers said there are sev­er­al coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca that lived un­der mar­tial law for a long time. "I don't know if that is the way to go. There are a num­ber of is­sues that need to be ad­dressed."