Even though Trinidad and To­ba­go was placed un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE) as of mid­night on May 15, Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj said there is a reg­u­la­to­ry process that must be fol­lowed.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, he said Un­der Sec­tions 7, 8 and 9 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, “That procla­ma­tion would be en­forced for 15 days...but there has to be a de­bate in the Par­lia­ment and the Par­lia­ment has to ap­prove any ex­ten­sion of 15 days by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty. It has a sys­tem in which the Gov­ern­ment has to ac­count to the pub­lic through the Par­lia­ment, for the procla­ma­tion and al­so for any ex­ten­sion of the procla­ma­tion.”

Ma­haraj said re­stric­tions would have to be im­posed.

“They would ob­vi­ous­ly make it an of­fence for you to have a par­ty at your house and con­tra­ven­ing the reg­u­la­tions.”

Those of­fences will come with fines or jail terms or both.

“Un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Gov­ern­ment can im­pose an SoE when there is an in­fec­tious dis­ease or pesti­lence.”

He said the Con­sti­tu­tion framers in 1962 recog­nised that the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance may not have been suf­fi­cient if there was a pan­dem­ic.

Mean­while, Ma­haraj said the reg­u­la­tions will give the po­lice the req­ui­site au­thor­i­ty to act.

“It will give them much more pow­er to deal with the reg­u­la­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties and to make sure peo­ple com­ply with the re­quire­ments of masks and things like that.”

Ma­haraj said a lot of peo­ple are of the view that when an SoE goes in­to ef­fect, the rights of cit­i­zens are tak­en away and there would be an abuse of gov­ern­men­tal pow­er.

This, he said, was a “com­plete mis­con­cep­tion.”

He ad­vised, “You can still ac­cess the court for ju­di­cial re­view and for Con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tions. And it pro­vides that a re­view tri­bunal has to be es­tab­lished in which peo­ple can ap­ply to have the re­view tri­bunal...if they de­tain any­body or con­fine any­body, with­out bring­ing an of­fence they can go to the re­view tri­bunal and that can even be chal­lenged in the courts af­ter­wards.”

Should the po­lice mis­use their pow­er or act out­side of the law, Ma­haraj said the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides a rem­e­dy for per­sons.

Ques­tioned if the pro­tec­tive ser­vices can en­ter a civil­ian’s home with­out a war­rant, Ma­haraj said it would all de­pend on what the reg­u­la­tions say.

He said cit­i­zens would not be able to en­joy their fun­da­men­tal rights as they nor­mal­ly do.

In Le­gal No­tice 141 of 2021 from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice yes­ter­day, the Pres­i­dent’s Procla­ma­tion read that: “(a) sec­tion 8(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, that the Pres­i­dent may from time to time make a Procla­ma­tion de­clar­ing that a state of pub­lic emer­gency ex­ists; and (b) sec­tion 8(2)(b) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, that a Procla­ma­tion made by the Pres­i­dent un­der sec­tion 8(1) shall not be ef­fec­tive un­less it con­tains a de­c­la­ra­tion that the Pres­i­dent is sat­is­fied that a pub­lic emer­gency has arisen as a re­sult of the oc­cur­rence of any earth­quake, hur­ri­cane, flood, fire, out­break of pesti­lence or of in­fec­tious dis­ease, or oth­er calami­ty whether sim­i­lar to the fore­go­ing or not.”

Un­der sec­tion 8(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Pres­i­dent in­di­cat­ed, “(a) I am sat­is­fied that a pub­lic emer­gency has arisen as a re­sult of the out­break of an in­fec­tious dis­ease [2019 Nov­el Coro­n­avirus (2019-nCoV)]; and (b) a state of pub­lic emer­gency ex­ists in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”