For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says cit­i­zens should be able to judge for them­selves the ef­fec­tive­ness of this cur­rent State of Emer­gency in com­par­i­son to the one called dur­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to com­ments from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie that the SoE called by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion on De­cem­ber 30, 2024 was for “noth­ing”, Row­ley said he had noth­ing to de­fend.

Hours af­ter the SoE was called on Fri­day, Ju­ly 18, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was asked dur­ing a news con­fer­ence about the dif­fer­ence be­tween this SoE and the pre­vi­ous one.

He said, “I hate to say this, but it was prompt­ed by noth­ing.”

He added, “It was based on the ac­tions of a prime min­is­ter who was not asleep at the wheel, but else­where and hav­ing fun while the rest of his cab­i­net might have been feast­ing.”

Speak­ing with re­porters at his Good­wood Park home, Row­ley re­spond­ed, “And all I can say, there is much to com­pare and con­trast to­day. This be­ing on­ly one of them. And what was said to you in De­cem­ber last year, when­ev­er it was, just com­pare it to what is be­ing said now in the same sce­nario. My com­ment is not go­ing to be on try­ing to de­fend any­thing that I did, or to say, ‘got you’. Let the pop­u­la­tion now, liv­ing in the days sub­se­quent, com­pare that with the days hith­er­to.”

The for­mer prime min­is­ter said he want­ed cit­i­zens to see the re­al­i­ty of what was hap­pen­ing.

“I have stepped out of gov­ern­men­tal ac­tiv­i­ties, and I have been de­lib­er­ate­ly, se­lec­tive­ly, not get­ting in­volved in the nar­ra­tive and the com­ments about mat­ters of gov­ern­ment at this time. And I want to pre­serve that, be­cause I want the pop­u­la­tion to com­pare and con­trast. You have all the in­for­ma­tion.”

The State of Emer­gency was de­clared af­ter law en­force­ment of­fi­cials dis­cov­ered what they called a dan­ger­ous and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing in­side and out­side of the prison which posed a ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty threat.

The pre­vi­ous SoE un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, which ran from De­cem­ber 31, 2024 to April 13, 2025 was de­clared to treat with a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat posed by crim­i­nal gangs.—Akash Sama­roo