At­tor­ney Om Lal­la be­lieves that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s vi­brant democ­ra­cy will pre­vent any abuse of pow­er un­der the new State of Emer­gency that has just come in­to ef­fect.

“The sus­pen­sion of rights is al­ways some­thing to be wor­ried about. But states of emer­gen­cies are used in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, as in this case. I don’t think there is a rea­son to wor­ry be­cause we are in a na­tion­al cri­sis. It is a strict, harsh mea­sure for the pro­tec­tion of life and lib­er­ty. The po­lice have to do their jobs and not ex­ceed their pow­ers,” he told the Sun­day Guardian.

He ex­plained in sim­ple lan­guage what a state of emer­gency means.

“A State of Emer­gency is a pow­er that the Pres­i­dent has in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, if the Pres­i­dent is sat­is­fied that there should be an im­po­si­tion of a state of emer­gency, which means that or­di­nary rights and priv­i­leges un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion are sus­pend­ed. A State of Emer­gency is on­ly de­clared in very ex­cep­tion­al cas­es, as has been seen from our his­to­ry.”

He re­ferred to Sec­tion 8 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which gives the Pres­i­dent the pow­ers to make the de­c­la­ra­tion.

He said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the cri­sis the coun­try is fac­ing with the in­creas­ing num­bers of cas­es and deaths does qual­i­fy as a sit­u­a­tion where a state of emer­gency can be im­posed.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­clared a State of Emer­gency with ef­fect from mid­night Sat­ur­day. He said the cur­few pe­ri­od will run from 9 pm to 5 am. He said this was to en­sure peo­ple have few­er op­por­tu­ni­ties to con­gre­gate and spread COVID-19.

Row­ley warned, “If you don't have to be out for ex­empt­ed rea­sons, you stay home un­der the force of law."

Lal­la re­ferred to the re­cent de­bate about whether po­lice can en­ter pri­vate prop­er­ties to stop par­ties and so­cial gath­er­ings deemed to be breach­ing the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions. He said this was no longer rel­e­vant, as the State of Emer­gency now al­lows law en­force­ment of­fi­cers to do any­thing that is re­quired to en­sure com­pli­ance.

“Or­di­nar­i­ly, no one can pre­vent you from free­dom of move­ment but it is now sus­pend­ed. If you break that, you can be charged…so that po­lice with search war­rants can go on­to prop­er­ties. So any gath­er­ings and events, any breach­es of the pub­lic or­der that the po­lice iden­ti­fy, they now have the pow­er to in­ter­vene to en­ter premis­es. In the nor­mal scheme of things those are the ba­sic rights sus­pend­ed.”

How­ev­er, he said with the sus­pen­sion of rights come a fear that con­sti­tu­tion­al rights such as free­dom of speech and move­ment can be abused by the po­lice.

“I think giv­en so­cial me­dia, giv­en an ag­gres­sive Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, it will keep the po­lice in check and bal­ance. But it does not take away from the fact that very of­ten, sus­pen­sion of rights leads to abus­es tak­ing place,” Lal­la said.

“We can on­ly hope giv­en the cir­cum­stances, that in such a cri­sis where we all are af­fect­ed, that there is rea­son­able con­duct on the part of the po­lice and in­di­vid­u­als to re­spect the pa­ra­me­ters of the State of Emer­gency.”

Speak­ing about the Pres­i­dent’s role, he said Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes would have been ap­proached by the Prime Min­is­ter and she has to be sat­is­fied that a State of Emer­gency is jus­ti­fied.

“If the Pres­i­dent is sat­is­fied, then a de­c­la­ra­tion is made by the Pres­i­dent, which is then sent to Par­lia­ment for procla­ma­tion. The Pres­i­dent may or may not make a pub­lic state­ment but it may be pub­lished in a for­mal way. The fact that the Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready de­clared it means that he has al­ready con­sult­ed with the Pres­i­dent and al­ready found favour in the ap­pli­ca­tion be­ing made.”

For­mer min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young speak­ing in Par­lia­ment in Jan­u­ary said: “Let’s un­der­stand what a State of Emer­gency means. It means I am aban­don­ing my con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. So as a philo­soph­i­cal point of view, I don’t be­lieve that you ever go that route un­til you are in an ab­solute last-stop po­si­tion, and we’re far from there.”

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site of the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, on­ly the Pres­i­dent is au­tho­rised to de­clare a state of pub­lic emer­gency.

Up to 8.25 Sat­ur­day night, Guardian me­dia was told that, "Her Ex­cel­len­cy and staff are at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent await­ing doc­u­ments from the Cab­i­net."

Heer­ah: Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty must show dis­cre­tion

Mean­while, Garvin Heer­ah, Strate­gic Se­cu­ri­ty Ex­pert, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and Safe City Op­er­a­tions said the State of the Emer­gency was ex­pect­ed.

"In all fair­ness, the coun­try, the Gov­ern­ment and the cit­i­zens were steer­ing the beast in the face. In many cir­cles, we ap­peared to be los­ing the fight. A ma­jor con­trib­u­tor was our com­pla­cen­cy. The State of Emer­gency will def­i­nite­ly pull the reigns on this, in­sti­tute Do's and Don'ts and put var­i­ous lev­els of con­trol."

He ad­vised that the Gov­ern­ment keep cit­i­zens up-to-date on how the sit­u­a­tion evolves.

"I would ad­vise that there be a de­tailed and com­pre­hen­sive Pub­lic Aware­ness pro­gramme that up­dates the cit­i­zens on what is tak­ing place at time­ly in­ter­vals. Not the Min­istry of Health press con­fer­ence. This should be what you can do, where you can and can­not go, how you can get there and emer­gency num­bers must be set up for the pe­ri­od of the State of Emer­gency."

The neg­a­tive im­pact, he said, will be many lim­i­ta­tions on move­ments and nor­mal busi­ness op­er­a­tions and that cit­i­zens will be psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly af­fect­ed and would need sup­port from the state agen­cies.

He hopes that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will play a twin role of en­force­ment and sup­port.

"We must not get car­ried away with an at­mos­phere of State of Emer­gency and be­gin forc­ing 'mano du­ra' tac­tics on our cit­i­zens. We must un­der­stand that the State of Emer­gency is due to a pan­dem­ic, that is no re­specter of per­son or po­si­tion. So, cit­i­zens as you ven­ture out, on­ly when you have to, ex­er­cise full pre­cau­tions."

He ad­vised all agents of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty when they ex­e­cute their op­er­a­tions to be tol­er­ant and un­der­stand­ing, show dis­cre­tion and work with the cit­i­zens.

"I close by mak­ing a clar­i­on call to all arms of gov­ern­ment, the rul­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Op­po­si­tion, both sides of the spec­trum, to put away the fool­ish tit for tats and stop try­ing to seek cheap po­lit­i­cal points, come to­geth­er as one team, unite your brain­pow­er and strate­gise in a uni­fied and syn­er­gised ef­fort to win this war."

PAST SoEs

A State of Emer­gency was de­clared in 1970 dur­ing the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion by then Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams.

Dur­ing the at­tempt­ed coup by the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen against the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) gov­ern­ment un­der the then prime min­is­ter ANR Robin­son, a State of Emer­gency was de­clared dur­ing the coup at­tempt and for a pe­ri­od af­ter the coup.

On Au­gust 4, 1995, a State of Emer­gency was de­clared to re­move the House Speak­er Oc­c­ah Seep­aul by then prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning dur­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis. The Gov­ern­ment had at­tempt­ed to re­move the speak­er via a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion, which failed. The State of Emer­gency was thus used to re­move the speak­er us­ing the emer­gency pow­ers grant­ed.

Un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so an­nounced a State of Emer­gency on Au­gust 22, 2011, in an at­tempt to crack down on gang ac­tiv­i­ty and the traf­fick­ing of il­le­gal drugs and firearms. The de­ci­sion of the then pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to is­sue the procla­ma­tion for the State of Emer­gency was de­bat­ed in the coun­try’s Par­lia­ment, as re­quired by the Con­sti­tu­tion, on Sep­tem­ber 2, 2011, and passed by the re­quired sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. On Sep­tem­ber 4, the Par­lia­ment ex­tend­ed the State of Emer­gency for a fur­ther three months. It end­ed in De­cem­ber 2011.

T&T’S CON­STI­TU­TION

Ex­cerpt from T&T's Con­sti­tu­tion:

8. (1) Sub­ject to this sec­tion, for the pur­pos­es of this Chap­ter, the Pres­i­dent may from time to time make a Procla­ma­tion de­clar­ing that a state of pub­lic emer­gency ex­ists. (2) A Procla­ma­tion made by the Pres­i­dent un­der sub­sec­tion (1)shall not be ef­fec­tive un­less it con­tains a de­c­la­ra­tion that the Pres­i­dent is sat­is­fied— (a) that a pub­lic emer­gency has arisen as a re­sult of the im­mi­nence of a state of war be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and a for­eign State; (b) 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; or (c) that ac­tion has been tak­en, or is im­me­di­ate­ly threat­ened, by any per­son, of such a na­ture and on so ex­ten­sive a scale, as to be like­ly to en­dan­ger the pub­lic safe­ty or to de­prive the com­mu­ni­ty or any sub­stan­tial por­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty of sup­plies or ser­vices es­sen­tial to life.