Ali­cia Llanos

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany said yes­ter­day among ma­jor con­cerns with the state of emer­gency are the mixed mes­sages from the Gov­ern­ment and its pub­lic re­la­tions. Ghany ex­pressed con­cern "over the use of the word 'lim­it­ed' in re­la­tion to the de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of emer­gency." He said the man­ner in which the word had been used was open to sev­er­al in­ter­pre­ta­tions by the pub­lic. Ghany not­ed that the state of emer­gency ap­plied at all of T&T and there­fore could not be con­sid­ered "lim­it­ed." An­oth­er in­ter­pre­ta­tion, he point­ed out, was that emer­gency or­ders made un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions are "lim­it­ed" to cer­tain ar­eas and do cov­er the en­tire coun­try.

He felt there were too many con­flicts in the way words were be­ing used by the Gov­ern­ment. In ad­di­tion, he told the T&T Guardian, the lack of prop­er pub­lic re­la­tions was not help­ing with the pub­lic's per­cep­tions of why the state of emer­gency was called and how its suc­cess would be mea­sured. Pressed on whether he thought a mech­a­nism oth­er than a state of emer­gency could have been used to deal with es­ca­lat­ing crime, Ghany said if one ex­am­ined poli­cies used by pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments over the last decade, it be­comes ap­par­ent that "some­body had to even­tu­al­ly use the state of emer­gency pol­i­cy."

He added, how­ev­er, it was im­por­tant to re­move the po­lit­i­cal par­ties from con­sid­er­a­tion of the range of pol­i­cy op­tions avail­able to fight crime. He said the de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of emer­gency was rec­om­mend­ed about eight years ago but was not used as there were oth­er pol­i­cy op­tions avail­able. Ghany said those pol­i­cy op­tions in­clud­ed di­a­logue with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers; Op­er­a­tion Ana­con­da; the cre­ation and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the Spe­cial An­ti Crime Unit of T&T (SAUTT); and the Bail Amend­ments Act. All had failed, he said. "It would be ap­par­ent that the State was run­ning out of pol­i­cy op­tions to fight crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try," he said.