Over the past two days, as Gov­ern­ment sought par­lia­men­tary ap­proval to ex­tend the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) for an ad­di­tion­al three months, fur­ther in­sight was pro­vid­ed in­to in­tel­li­gence gath­ered with­in the prison sys­tem.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has tak­en the lead in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the pub­lic dur­ing the de­bate and has so far re­vealed some trou­bling find­ings of col­lu­sion and com­pro­mise in­volv­ing Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in­mates, prison of­fi­cers, and, in some in­stances, at­tor­neys.

And while the full sto­ry of what led to the SoE de­c­la­ra­tion may nev­er be told, there re­main sev­er­al unan­swered ques­tions which beg for greater trans­paren­cy, in an en­vi­ron­ment in which pub­lic con­fi­dence has al­ready been sig­nif­i­cant­ly rat­tled.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors have in­di­cat­ed, based on in­tel­li­gence gath­ered over months, that there has been an evolv­ing threat to State and ju­di­cial of­fi­cials that on­ly re­cent­ly reached a point of ac­tion­able ur­gency.

But this begs the ques­tion, why now?

We have al­so been told the na­tion­al threat has not re­sult­ed from gen­er­al gang ac­tiv­i­ty, but a spe­cif­ic, co­or­di­nat­ed ef­fort aimed at desta­bil­i­sa­tion. Un­der­scor­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al likened the threat to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup by the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen, while Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro de­scribed it as a tar­get­ed con­spir­a­cy against key State fig­ures, as op­posed to any wide­spread break­down of pub­lic or­der.

With this said, the coun­try is right­ly con­cerned about the ap­par­ent so­phis­ti­ca­tion and reach of this al­leged crim­i­nal net­work, which is seem­ing­ly ca­pa­ble of plan­ning a ma­jor as­sault from with­in the con­fines of the prison sys­tem.

If this is the case, it ex­pos­es trou­bling vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties with­in our cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties and high­lights deep­er struc­tur­al weak­ness­es across the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­work that must be ur­gent­ly ad­dressed. Giv­en the long­stand­ing is­sues of con­tra­band and gang in­fil­tra­tion with­in the prison sys­tem, it has to be asked again, why now?

If such plots have been de­vel­op­ing over time, what spe­cif­ic ac­tions by the State and Ju­di­cia­ry could have trig­gered es­ca­la­tion at this par­tic­u­lar point?

In her state­ment to Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar touched on CEPEP con­tracts and the lev­el of crim­i­nal­i­ty her Gov­ern­ment be­lieves was be­ing en­abled through the pro­gramme.

How­ev­er, she stopped short of di­rect­ly link­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of these con­tracts—and the re­sult­ing dis­rup­tion of fi­nan­cial chan­nels to gang el­e­ments—to any re­tal­ia­to­ry plans or co­or­di­nat­ed threats.

While it is rea­son­able to spec­u­late about a po­ten­tial con­nec­tion be­tween Gov­ern­ment’s crack­down on il­lic­it fund­ing and the emer­gence of these threats, this still does not ex­plain why the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions has be­come the tar­get of a planned as­sas­si­na­tion plot.

While it is un­der­stood that the State can­not dis­close all in­tel­li­gence re­lat­ed to the al­leged plot, the pub­lic re­mains un­cer­tain as to whether the threat could have been con­tained with­out re­sort­ing to emer­gency pow­ers.

It al­so re­mains un­clear whether the SoE ex­ten­sion is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary at this time.

The de­c­la­ra­tion of an SoE—though war­rant­ed in cas­es of im­me­di­ate na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat—in­evitably car­ries sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for civ­il lib­er­ties and pub­lic con­fi­dence.

For the pub­lic to ful­ly grasp and sup­port such ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures, there must be a clear­er ex­pla­na­tion of the un­der­ly­ing threats, as well as a trans­par­ent, long-term strat­e­gy for dis­man­tling the en­trenched crim­i­nal net­works that have tak­en root.

Ad­dress­ing this di­rect­ly would lend greater le­git­i­ma­cy to Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions and help en­sure sus­tained pub­lic sup­port over the com­ing months of this ex­tend­ed SoE.