Akash Sama­roo and

Da­reece Po­lo

The Gov­ern­ment ap­pears head­ed for an­oth­er bat­tle in the Sen­ate over its Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion, with Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors in­di­cat­ing they are pre­pared to con­sid­er an amend­ed bill while warn­ing that their sup­port will de­pend on what changes are made.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors Faris Al-Rawi, Dr Amery Browne, Fos­ter Cum­mings and Dr Mar­garet Satya Rose, as well as In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs, sig­nalled their po­si­tions while re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on their way in­to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

While Al-Rawi and Browne said they were pre­pared to first ex­am­ine what­ev­er re­vised leg­is­la­tion the Gov­ern­ment pro­duces, both made it clear that the ver­sion pre­vi­ous­ly brought to Par­lia­ment would not re­ceive their sup­port.

Cum­mings was more de­fin­i­tive, say­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) would not sup­port ZOSO “in any form,” while Rose said the Op­po­si­tion would “hold the line” it adopt­ed when the leg­is­la­tion pre­vi­ous­ly came be­fore the Sen­ate.

Attzs, mean­while, said she was look­ing for­ward to amend­ments to the leg­is­la­tion which could se­cure her sup­port.

The Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) Bill, 2026 failed in the Sen­ate ear­li­er this year af­ter the Gov­ern­ment was un­able to se­cure the three-fifths spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty re­quired for its pas­sage. The leg­is­la­tion faced op­po­si­tion over con­cerns sur­round­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and safe­guards, with In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors al­so with­hold­ing the sup­port the Gov­ern­ment need­ed.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der an­nounced in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to bring the leg­is­la­tion back as part of its post-State of Emer­gency (SoE) crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.

The pre­vi­ous bill sought to al­low the Prime Min­is­ter to de­clare des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas as ZOSOs, with joint po­lice and mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions, war­rant­less search­es, cur­fews and de­ten­tion among the mea­sures avail­able with­in those zones.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said the Op­po­si­tion has not yet seen the new leg­is­la­tion and there­fore could not de­ter­mine whether the Gov­ern­ment has ad­dressed the con­cerns raised dur­ing its first at­tempt.

How­ev­er, he al­so ques­tioned whether cit­i­zens should be com­fort­able al­low­ing a mem­ber of the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate to de­ter­mine which com­mu­ni­ties are sub­ject­ed to spe­cial se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

“Are you com­fort­able with a politi­cian de­clar­ing a state of emer­gency-type area?” Al-Rawi asked.

Browne sim­i­lar­ly said the Op­po­si­tion would wait to see what changes, if any, are con­tained in the new bill.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of abus­ing emer­gency pow­ers through the de­ten­tion of hun­dreds of peo­ple, point­ing specif­i­cal­ly to the cas­es of Star Sab­ga and busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, who were de­tained un­der PDOs but sub­se­quent­ly re­leased with­out be­ing charged.

He said those cas­es raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about how ex­pand­ed se­cu­ri­ty pow­ers could be ex­er­cised un­der ZOSO.

Cum­mings, how­ev­er, said the Op­po­si­tion would not sup­port the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion as the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the SoE had re­in­forced the PNM’s con­cerns about the pro­tec­tion of cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

Alexan­der hope­ful In­de­pen­dents will back ZOSO this time

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der, how­ev­er, be­lieves In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors may be more in­clined to sup­port the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion when it re­turns to the Up­per House, ar­gu­ing that pub­lic un­der­stand­ing of the mea­sure has changed since its de­feat ear­li­er this year.

He stressed that the leg­is­la­tion al­so pro­vides for so­cial in­ter­ven­tion and the re­de­vel­op­ment of com­mu­ni­ties deemed in need of gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance, say­ing the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment would be re­quired to iden­ti­fy the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to a com­mu­ni­ty’s un­der­per­for­mance once an area is des­ig­nat­ed a zone.

Sen­a­tors press PM to name al­leged vote-seek­ers

Attz and Rose are al­so press­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to iden­ti­fy the two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors she al­leged sought per­son­al favours in ex­change for sup­port­ing the ZOSO Bill.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the al­le­ga­tion on Jan­u­ary 28, days af­ter the leg­is­la­tion was de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate.

Attzs yes­ter­day re­newed her call for the al­le­ga­tion to be re­ferred to po­lice.

“I think some time has passed and per­haps po­si­tions have been mod­i­fied and soft­ened some­what be­cause there’s been no ev­i­dence that has been brought in­to the pub­lic space. And in the fa­mous words of sev­er­al of our politi­cians, ‘take it to the po­lice.’”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc­Nish de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on the mat­ter, say­ing he had al­ready ad­dressed it.

In Feb­ru­ary, Mc­Nish de­nied ap­proach­ing any­one for favours and said that if the Con­sti­tu­tion re­quired the mat­ter to be re­port­ed to po­lice, it should have been.

Rose, who re­placed Janelle John-Bates and was not a mem­ber of the Sen­ate when the Bill was de­bat­ed, al­so con­demned the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment.

“It’s high­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate to cast such as­per­sions on the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and then not even bring the in­for­ma­tion out for the pub­lic to know. If it is true that this oc­curred, then this is some­thing that every sin­gle cit­i­zen should know—who in the In­de­pen­dent Sen­ate said X or did Y and it should be sent to the po­lice as well. So, one has to won­der: was it true?”