Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

To­day’s Par­lia­ment de­bate on the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE)will be fol­lowed by a de­bate on a law pro­posed to pro­vide for T&T’s new Coat of Arms—re­plac­ing Christo­pher Colum­bus’ three ships with this coun­try’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment, the steel­pan.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by Gov­ern­ment’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives leader Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.

Af­ter the de­bate on the SoE or­der, the de­bate will then be on the Na­tion­al Em­blems of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Reg­u­la­tion) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025.

This amends the Na­tion­al Em­blems of T&T (Reg­u­la­tion) Act Chp 19:04 to pro­vide for a new Coat of Arms. This fol­lows Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment at the Au­gust 24 PNM spe­cial con­ven­tion, last year, where he re­vealed plans to re­move Colum­bus’ three ships—the Ni­na, Pin­ta and San­ta Maria. These will be re­placed with the steel­pan.

Em­i­nent de­sign­er Gillian Bish­op was tasked with pro­duc­ing ren­der­ings, from which the Cab­i­net would have cho­sen the fi­nal po­si­tion. The as­sign­ment is ex­pect­ed to have “small costs but not hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars,” ac­cord­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter.

To­day, Row­ley will pi­lot de­bate on the bill which re­quires a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote for pas­sage.

De­bate on that bill will be pre­ced­ed by the mo­tion for par­lia­men­tary ap­proval for the SoE, which was an­nounced on De­cem­ber 30, 2024 by then-act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young. This in­volved the Gov­ern­ment’s bid to pro­tect the pub­lic from gang reprisals fol­low­ing the mur­der of 23 peo­ple over the week pri­or to the SoE an­nounce­ment main­ly due to war­ring gangs.

Ac­cord­ing to the mo­tion, af­ter the SoE was de­clared, Sec­tion 9 (2) of the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lows it to re­main in ef­fect for 15 days with­out par­lia­men­tary ap­proval. With­in three days of the Pres­i­dent’s procla­ma­tion to de­clare the SoE, the Pres­i­dent must send a state­ment to Par­lia­ment, out­lin­ing the spe­cif­ic grounds on which the SoE de­ci­sion was based. The state­ment was de­liv­ered on De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

The Pres­i­dent’s state­ment, which will be laid in the House to­day, will be de­bat­ed. The mo­tion is list­ed for pre­sen­ta­tion by the Prime Min­is­ter.

A sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote is re­quired for pas­sage of the mo­tion for a three-month SoE in the first in­stance. But a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote—and UNC sup­port—will be need­ed to ex­tend it be­yond three months.

The Op­po­si­tion will be ques­tion­ing the SoE’s ef­fec­tive­ness.

Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir who’s among five MPs es­tranged from the par­ty, has ques­tioned the UNC’s po­si­tion on the bill, whether its cau­cus met to dis­cuss it and if es­tranged MPs like him­self would be in­formed of the UNC’s po­si­tion or “last minute”. Rag­bir said that was un­ac­cept­able for a well-or­gan­ised par­ty in the 21st cen­tu­ry. He felt that as the PNM “re-en­gi­neered it­self to meet T&T’s emerg­ing re­al­i­ties, the UNC-cult re­mains in the 1960s max­i­mum lead­er­ship mode.”

His col­leagues Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray and Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles added they were not con­sult­ed or told of any cau­cus ei­ther. Charles, there­fore, said his con­tri­bu­tion would re­flect his un­der­stand­ing of “what is in the na­tion­al in­ter­est as T&T con­fronts the scourge of es­ca­lat­ing crime.”