Brent Zephyrine

The state of emer­gency is a "defin­ing mo­ment" for both Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. So said po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany when asked whether he felt the state of emer­gency was a "make or break" sit­u­a­tion for the Gov­ern­ment. He told the Sun­day Guardian: "This state of emer­gency is the defin­ing mo­ment of her (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) Prime Min­is­ter­ship and the defin­ing mo­ment of this Gov­ern­ment be­cause crime has been the num­ber one is­sue that has been ad­dressed over the last six or sev­en years and so, any abil­i­ty to ad­dress the prob­lem-in a man­ner that brings about a re­duc­tion in the fear of crime in the so­ci­ety-would ob­vi­ous­ly have a high lev­el of po­lit­i­cal re­ward."

Ghany al­lud­ed, al­so, to the con­cerns that mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion may have "if this thing works" since they may suf­fer "some po­lit­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties" as a re­sult, giv­en their lack of sup­port for the state of emer­gency. He said while one could con­cur that the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion (Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment) at­tempt­ed "to deal with se­ri­ous crime in the coun­try"-through leg­is­la­tion, the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit (SAUTT), the blimp and di­a­logue with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers-it clear­ly did not re­flect "the kind of suc­cess that they would have liked." "On the whole, I am sup­port­ive of the ac­tion

tak­en. I think that the crime sit­u­a­tion had rea ched to the point where peo­ple were be­gin­ning to ques­tion

whether the State had the ca­pac­i­ty to deal with this is­sue.

"I be­lieve that the pa­tience of the pub­lic had been test­ed and that this was the kind of ac­tion that was need­ed to give the State an up­per hand in fight­ing a bat­tle we are per­haps now dis­cov­er­ing, is far more wide­spread (in its reach) than we would have thought," Ghany added. "I think that the state of emer­gency is a pol­i­cy op­tion whose time had come," the po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst said as he al­lud­ed to two de­clined rec­om­men­da­tions in 1985 (Scott Drug Re­port) and 2003 (Ken Gor­don Com­mit­tee) re­spec­tive­ly, for the gov­ern­ments of the day to act sim­i­lar­ly.

Ghany added: "We have a sit­u­a­tion now in 2011 where­by the pol­i­cy op­tion of a state of emer­gency

(to ad­dress the is­sue of vi­o­lent crime in the coun­try) has arisen for a third time and the Prime Min­is­ter has ac­cept­ed that rec­om­men­da­tion and has sought to take ac­tion in ac­cor­dance with it." Asked whether he felt the cur­few should be ex­tend­ed through­out T&T and not on­ly in those des­ig­nat­ed hot spots,Ghany said such a de­ci­sion was "dri­ven by the rel­e­vant in­tel­li­gence avail­able to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil" and as such, could not of­fer a com­ment on a mat­ter to which he was not ful­ly ap­prised. For­eign­ers watch­ing us close­ly Far from hav­ing an ad­verse ef­fect on the na­tion's tourism and for­eign in­vest­ment,

Ghany hint­ed that the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty may very well be tak­ing notes on de­vel­op­ments be­ing made dur­ing the state of emer­gency.

He said: "I get the sense that oth­er coun­tries, who have se­ri­ous crime prob­lems, are look­ing at T&T and view­ing it in the con­text of a de­vel­op­ing coun­try us­ing the state of emer­gency op­tion, as one of the

ways to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion." "I sus­pect they (de­vel­op­ing coun­tries) are watch­ing us to see how we han­dle the sit­u­a­tion and what lessons can be learnt in us­ing such an op­tion," Ghany added.

He said, too, that the "de­vel­oped coun­tries" would be par­tic­u­lar­ly "sup­port­ive of this kind of ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place" in T&T since "many of them are af­fect­ed by the drug trade" and more so, of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that T&T may be "a trans-ship­ment point." Con­se­quent­ly, "the suc­cess of the ven­ture would cre­ate a dif­fer­ent kind of coun­try that may then make it­self more at­trac­tive to for­eign in­vest­ment and tourist ac­tiv­i­ty," ac­cord­ing to Ghany.

Fear fac­tor

He agreed that while the quan­ti­ta­tive mea­sure of suc­cess will be based on the State's abil­i­ty to sus­tain a re­duc­tion in crime lev­els af­ter the state of emer­gency has been lift­ed, there was al­so "a qual­i­ta­tive method­ol­o­gy" and "the fear of crime in­dex"which need­ed to be con­sid­ered and "was dif­fi­cult

to mea­sure". "This in­dex (fear of crime) is a sta­tis­ti­cal di­men­sion that is not just based on how many guns and am­mu­ni­tion were found; how many peo­ple were cap­tured, charged and con­vict­ed; but on

a qual­i­ta­tive as­sess­ment of how peo­ple feel in their minds with re­spect to their per­son­al safe­ty and com­fort." Pres­i­dent should "clear the air" Asked how he viewed the ab­sence of Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards who is cur­rent­ly on va­ca­tion with his wife Dr Jean Ramjohn Richards un­til Oc­to­ber

5-dur­ing the state of emer­gency- Ghany said he "felt a lit­tle awk­ward about that." "The Prime Min­is­ter was trav­el­ling on of­fi­cial busi­ness and made a de­ci­sion to cur­tail the pe­ri­od of ab­sence sim­ply to sat­is­fy the re­quire­ments of the of­fi­cial busi­ness and come back but with the Pres­i­dent (Richards) go­ing on

va­ca­tion, I don't know if I was 100 per cent com­fort­able with it.

"I didn't think that hav­ing been sat­is­fied that there was the need for a state of emer­gency, that go­ing on va­ca­tion short­ly af­ter­wards was the best sig­nal to send," he said. Ghany added that while "the Pres­i­dent

could have de­cid­ed to de­fer his va­ca­tion be­cause of the state of emer­gency", there might have been cir­cum­stances (med­ical or oth­er­wise) which mit­i­gat­ed his de­ci­sion and as such, Richards "may want

to clear the air up­on his re­turn." "The Pres­i­dent can ex­er­cise his choice of go­ing on va­ca­tion. I don't know

what the com­mit­ments were and that's why I'll need to have that caveat over the state­ment but if we just take what is in the pub­lic do­main-of it be­ing just va­ca­tion-then I think that it could have been han­dled a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly.