Se­nior Coun­sel Mar­tin Daly says the Gov­ern­ment must pro­vide clear and co­her­ent in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic about the ba­sis of the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE), warn­ing that trust in pub­lic of­fi­cials could be im­pact­ed.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Daly said an SoE im­pos­es sig­nif­i­cant lim­i­ta­tions on civ­il lib­er­ties, and there­fore de­mands a high lev­el of trans­paren­cy and re­spon­si­ble con­duct from the au­thor­i­ties.

“When a State of Emer­gency is de­clared, it re­al­ly re­quires the pub­lic to take the Gov­ern­ment at its word,” Daly said. “Trust and con­fi­dence in pub­lic of­fi­cials is gen­er­al­ly low in Trinidad and To­ba­go, so peo­ple are con­cerned to know what this is re­al­ly about.”

He ex­plained that the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lows for a state of emer­gency in cas­es of nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, war, or threats to pub­lic safe­ty, and not­ed that in this in­stance, the Gov­ern­ment act­ed un­der the pro­vi­sion re­lat­ing to a threat like­ly to en­dan­ger pub­lic safe­ty.

“They’ve hint­ed at the rea­sons—talk about trou­ble in the pris­ons, col­lab­o­ra­tion of armed gangs, even a men­tion of a rock­et launch­er and ref­er­ences to the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup. But these threads must be pulled to­geth­er in one co­her­ent state­ment to Par­lia­ment,” Daly said.

He al­so ad­dressed the re­lo­ca­tion of high-pro­file in­mates un­der the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions and re­ports that their le­gal teams were de­nied ac­cess.

“Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions have al­lowed for per­sons to be de­tained out­side the usu­al pris­ons, and this ap­pears to be law­ful,” Daly said. “How­ev­er, the right of ac­cess to at­tor­neys re­mains im­por­tant. That de­nial of ac­cess was tem­porar­i­ly val­i­dat­ed by a High Court rul­ing, but we will have to see what hap­pens next in lit­i­ga­tion.”

Daly warned that dur­ing a SoE, pro­tec­tions such as search war­rants can be sus­pend­ed, but this places even greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on State agents to act fair­ly.

“Yes, rights are sus­pend­ed to some ex­tent, but not with­out bound­aries,” he said. “There must be a care­ful bal­ance. If State agents act out­side what the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions al­low, they risk un­law­ful ac­tions and lit­i­ga­tion.”

Re­fer­ring to the 2011 State of Emer­gency un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Daly not­ed that many peo­ple won law­suits for rights in­fringe­ments dur­ing that pe­ri­od. He said the State must be cau­tious, as any fall­out from abus­es would be paid for by tax­pay­ers.

Daly al­so warned that re­peat­ed de­c­la­ra­tions of SoEs dam­age Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing strug­gles with vi­o­lent crime and its his­to­ry, in­clud­ing the 1990 coup at­tempt.

“This sends a poor sig­nal to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers.

“Emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions can­not be a sub­sti­tute for do­ing the hard leg­isla­tive work to fix the jus­tice sys­tem,” he said.