Ke­jan Haynes

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Gov­ern­ment had no choice but to de­clare a State of Emer­gency af­ter re­ceiv­ing cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence of a co­or­di­nat­ed gang plot to as­sas­si­nate mem­bers of the jus­tice sys­tem and at­tack state fa­cil­i­ties.

But just sev­en months ago in De­cem­ber, Per­sad-Bisses­sar, then op­po­si­tion leader, harsh­ly crit­i­cised a sim­i­lar move by the for­mer Gov­ern­ment, even while ac­knowl­edg­ing she had called for a state of emer­gency in Jan­u­ary 2024. 

"For years, while in Op­po­si­tion, I re­peat­ed­ly called for a State of Emer­gency, not as cheap po­lit­i­cal gim­mick­ry to ap­pease the pop­u­la­tion lead­ing up to an elec­tion, but as a crit­i­cal mea­sure to at­tack the crime sit­u­a­tion with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the law," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in a writ­ten state­ment. "This Gov­ern­ment walks the walk."

She had dis­missed Kei­th Row­ley’s De­cem­ber 2024 SoE as “shame­less po­lit­i­cal gim­mick­ry” and con­demned his de­ci­sion to let act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al at the time, Stu­art Young, front the an­nounce­ment.

On Fri­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was al­so ab­sent from her Gov­ern­ment’s tele­vised brief­ing. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie led the up­date, re­veal­ing the SoE had been signed short­ly af­ter mid­night fol­low­ing in­tel­li­gence re­ports from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er about what he de­scribed as “a syn­di­cate of gangs” plot­ting to desta­bilise the coun­try.

“This is not two or three per­sons,” Je­re­mie said. “We were left with no choice…faced with cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion that per­sons in­volved in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice were to be as­sas­si­nat­ed…we make no apolo­gies for that.”

The SoE gives se­cu­ri­ty forces broad­er pow­ers to de­tain sus­pects and dis­rupt what Je­re­mie called “a clear and di­rect at­tack” on cit­i­zens, po­lice of­fi­cers and the ju­di­cia­ry. He said po­lice op­er­a­tions be­gan at 6 a.m. Wednes­day and re­main on­go­ing.

In a writ­ten state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she act­ed im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter re­ceiv­ing the in­tel­li­gence re­port. “I will not stand idly by for years, months, weeks or even days while a mi­nor­i­ty of il­le­gal­ly armed in­di­vid­u­als act in con­cert to in­tim­i­date the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

She added, “I will not tol­er­ate a resur­gence of kid­nap­pings for ran­som and oth­er heinous crimes ini­ti­at­ed by gangs. I will not al­low these el­e­ments of so­ci­ety to con­tin­ue to ter­rorise and trau­ma­tise law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and to wreak hav­oc in our land.”

In De­cem­ber, when Row­ley im­posed an SoE in re­sponse to a spike in mur­ders and kid­nap­pings, Per­sad-Bisses­sar strong­ly con­demned Row­ley, even prompt­ing a dai­ly news­pa­per to head­line "Cow­ard Row­ley" on the front page. “This was a cow­ard­ly, lazy and greedy move from a Gov­ern­ment that has giv­en up and col­lapsed,” she had said at the time.

On Fri­day, Je­re­mie de­fend­ed the cur­rent SoE, say­ing it was not com­pa­ra­ble.

“The pre­vi­ous one was prompt­ed by noth­ing,” he said. “This one is based on in­tel­li­gence of a co­or­di­nat­ed threat. I don’t want to politi­cise it."

Je­re­mie said the Pres­i­dent signed the procla­ma­tion ear­ly this morn­ing, and that any de­ci­sion to ap­proach Par­lia­ment would de­pend on how long the sit­u­a­tion lasts.

“We are de­ter­mined to deal with this can­cer,” Je­re­mie said. “What hap­pened in 1990 will not hap­pen on our watch.”