Richard Lord

De­spite crit­i­cisms from Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and many oth­ers in T&T, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she has no re­grets about call­ing the state of emer­gency to deal with spi­ralling crime.The state of emer­gency was de­clared on Au­gust 21 and af­ter 15 days it was ex­tend­ed to De­cem­ber 5. It ex­pired at mid­night last night as the Gov­ern­ment made no move to fur­ther ex­tend it. The Gov­ern­ment would have re­quired the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion for a fur­ther ex­ten­sion.

Row­ley said last week no sup­port would have been forth­com­ing from the Op­po­si­tion.In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian hours be­fore the state of emer­gency ex­pired yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "I have no re­grets."She said: "The crim­i­nal of­fences were down, a num­ber of il­le­gal drugs, guns and am­mu­ni­tion were found by the se­cu­ri­ty forces."The state of emer­gency was a suc­cess­ful crime-fight­ing weapon. I have no re­grets."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day none of the mea­sures used be­fore were suc­cess­ful in the fight against crime."This weapon (emer­gency) was suc­cess­ful and the na­tion is now safer," she in­sist­ed.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the se­cu­ri­ty forces "are now ful­ly mo­bilised. They have a plan and are ready and able to deal with crime and the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, post state of emer­gency."She said she was en­cour­aged by the suc­cess of the emer­gency and re­mained com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing all cit­i­zens of T&T re­mained safe.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said sev­er­al so­cial mea­sures, in­clud­ing "Colour Me Or­ange", have been de­vel­oped and were be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure the less for­tu­nate in the so­ci­ety led more re­ward­ing lives.Last week, the se­cu­ri­ty forces al­leged­ly un­veiled a plot to as­sas­si­nate Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma.Some 16 peo­ple were de­tained un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers in con­nec­tion with the al­leged plot.

They were not charged and were ex­pect­ed to be re­leased on the ex­pi­ra­tion of the emer­gency at mid­night last night.