KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers (ASL) has heav­i­ly crit­i­cised the re­cent­ly de­clared State of Emer­gency (SoE), brand­ing it a “com­e­dy of er­rors” and an ill-pre­pared re­sponse to T&T’s un­re­lent­ing crime wave.

In a state­ment, the ASL, head­ed by pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan, ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the lack of fore­sight and plan­ning, cit­ing sev­er­al mis­steps, in­clud­ing the ab­sence of clear reg­u­la­tions, de­layed ac­tion, and the late ap­point­ment of a tri­bunal by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie. They al­so high­light­ed the trag­ic mur­der of a promi­nent at­tor­ney as a stark re­minder of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­abil­i­ty to pro­tect cit­i­zens.

The Gov­ern­ment jus­ti­fied the SoE as a re­sponse to the threat of gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence and reprisals with high-cal­i­bre weapons fol­low­ing two re­cent in­ci­dents in Port-of-Spain. How­ev­er, the ASL ques­tioned why long­stand­ing is­sues of gang-re­lat­ed crime sud­den­ly re­quired such dras­tic ac­tion.

Con­fu­sion grew af­ter con­flict­ing state­ments on De­cem­ber 31 from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and Act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young. Hinds claimed the SoE was based on 2024 crime sta­tis­tics, while Young cit­ed re­cent high-pow­ered shoot­ings and the risk of gang reprisals.

The ASL point­ed to de­lays in im­ple­ment­ing the SoE af­ter its an­nounce­ment, al­low­ing crim­i­nal gangs am­ple time to pre­pare. Cou­pled with the lack of im­me­di­ate reg­u­la­tions, it said this led to op­er­a­tional in­ef­fi­cien­cies.

“These laps­es sug­gest a lack of fore­sight and strate­gic plan­ning on the part of the au­thor­i­ties,” the state­ment on Fridasy said.

The as­sem­bly al­so took is­sue with the in­clu­sion of a gun amnesty in the SoE strat­e­gy. While in­tend­ed to re­duce gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence, they ar­gued it is un­re­al­is­tic to ex­pect hard­ened crim­i­nals to sur­ren­der their weapons vol­un­tar­i­ly.

“Crim­i­nal gangs are un­like­ly to vol­un­tar­i­ly sur­ren­der their firearms, which are cen­tral to their op­er­a­tions and pow­er dy­nam­ics. It is fool­ish to think this mea­sure will bear fruit,” the state­ment read.

The broad pow­ers grant­ed un­der the SoE, such as war­rant­less search­es and de­ten­tions up to 48 hours with­out charges, raised con­cerns about po­ten­tial hu­man rights abus­es. The ASL warned that giv­ing the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter the au­thor­i­ty to or­der de­ten­tions al­so cre­ates op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­ec­u­tive over­reach.

The Prime Min­is­ter, as chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, was al­so crit­i­cised for his lack of pub­lic re­as­sur­ance or clar­i­ty dur­ing the process.

The ASL fur­ther not­ed that calls for an SoE had been made as ear­ly as Jan­u­ary 2024. De­spite this, it said the Gov­ern­ment wait­ed un­til year-end to act, by­pass­ing ro­bust par­lia­men­tary de­bate and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process­es.

“This lack of leg­isla­tive scruti­ny un­der­mines de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process­es and sets a dan­ger­ous prece­dent,” the ASL said.

Cit­ing the fail­ures of pre­vi­ous SoEs in 2011 and 2021, the ASL ar­gued that such mea­sures have his­tor­i­cal­ly done lit­tle to ad­dress the root caus­es of crime.

“The cur­rent State of Emer­gency, marred by de­layed im­ple­men­ta­tion, ques­tion­able gun amnesty log­ic, poor plan­ning, and lack of over­sight, is a mis­step that di­verts at­ten­tion from com­pre­hen­sive re­forms nec­es­sary to en­sure the safe­ty of all cit­i­zens.”