Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment’s de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency yes­ter­day has sparked a wave of crit­i­cism from the lead­ers of sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal par­ties, chief among them UNC and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who has chalked it up to “po­lit­i­cal gim­mick­ry.”

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Port-of-Spain, act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young ex­plained that the mea­sures aim to tar­get vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in­volv­ing il­le­gal firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, and ex­plo­sives, which es­ca­lat­ed with a spate of killings dur­ing the month of De­cem­ber, while al­so en­sur­ing that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens’ rights are min­i­mal­ly im­pact­ed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, how­ev­er, said if Gov­ern­ment had heed­ed her calls at the be­gin­ning of the year for a state of emer­gency in­stead of be­ing con­demned, “many lives” could have been saved.

“Af­ter lis­ten­ing to a most pa­thet­ic Gov­ern­ment press con­fer­ence this morn­ing, it is clear that the SoE was not called be­cause of any gen­uine con­cern for the safe­ty of cit­i­zens but rather as a shame­less act of po­lit­i­cal gim­mick­ry to be used as pro­pa­gan­da for the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

“The Gov­ern­ment is drown­ing in self-made fail­ure and has re­sort­ed again to us­ing the dead cat tac­tic, where­by they make a shock­ing an­nounce­ment to di­vert at­ten­tion away from so­ci­ety’s prob­lems and is­sues. This Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to em­bar­rass it­self and has be­come a laugh­ing stock,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so slammed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley over his fail­ure to ad­dress the coun­try di­rect­ly about the de­vel­op­ment.

“The Prime Min­is­ter could not find the courage to ad­dress the na­tion. This is un­doubt­ed­ly the most in­sult­ing act of cow­ardice and dis­re­spect we have ever wit­nessed from this lazy, greedy old man.”

The Prime Min­is­ter was in To­ba­go fol­low­ing the death of his broth­er on Sun­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of lack­ing a co­he­sive plan to tack­le crime.

“Why now, just be­fore the elec­tions? Why has the Gov­ern­ment on­ly now wok­en up to the in­flux of high-pow­ered weapons flood­ing our streets? Did these weapons mag­i­cal­ly ap­pear yes­ter­day? The truth is, this is the re­sult of about ten years of fail­ure by the PNM and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus to se­cure our bor­ders, com­bat the traf­fick­ing of guns and drugs, and con­trol the rise of gang ac­tiv­i­ty. This Gov­ern­ment has al­lowed these crim­i­nals to grow bold­er and more dan­ger­ous by the day.”

Deputy UNC leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal al­so ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of call­ing the SoE to “in­ter­vene to pro­tect one gang from an­oth­er gang!”

“This cal­lous regime nev­er in­ter­venes to pro­tect el­der­ly cit­i­zens from home in­no­va­tion and mur­der or chil­dren from kid­nap­ping.”

Mooni­lal echoed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion that the SoE was a po­lit­i­cal gim­mick, which, he said, “lacks rel­e­vant and ef­fec­tive sup­port­ing poli­cies and pro­grammes to be use­ful in the war against mur­der­ous gang­sters armed with mod­ern fire­pow­er and easy ac­cess to wide-opened bor­ders.”

Grif­fith: SoE ‘hyp­o­crit­i­cal

and in­ef­fec­tive’

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith la­belled Gov­ern­ment’s State of Emer­gency as both “hyp­o­crit­i­cal and in­ef­fec­tive.”

Grif­fith, a for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, said the SoE is not a crime-fight­ing tool and on­ly of­fers a tem­po­rary re­prieve.

“We have reached a point of the knee jerk where the Gov­ern­ment has reached a sit­u­a­tion where they do not know what to do and what is hyp­o­crit­i­cal, this is the same Gov­ern­ment that when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship did the same thing in 2011, Fitzger­ald Hinds and oth­ers slammed the then-gov­ern­ment for do­ing ex­act­ly what they do­ing now.”

Grif­fith de­scribed the re­liance on a state of emer­gency as “baf­fling,” giv­en that there are oth­er, more ef­fec­tive meth­ods to ad­dress crime with­out in­fring­ing on civ­il lib­er­ties.

“I utilised a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty alert sys­tem, es­ca­lat­ing from green to am­ber, red, and fi­nal­ly black, based on threat as­sess­ments of in­di­vid­u­als im­pact­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. As the threat lev­el in­creased, so did the util­i­sa­tion of equip­ment, tools, and law en­force­ment agen­cies. This grad­u­at­ed ap­proach al­lowed us to ef­fec­tive­ly sup­press crim­i­nal el­e­ments with­out re­sort­ing to the dras­tic and rights-in­fring­ing mea­sure of a state of emer­gency.”

The NTA leader al­so warned against re­peat­ing what he said were the dis­as­trous events of the 2011 SoE, where “in­com­pe­tence” with­in the po­lice hi­er­ar­chy led to hun­dreds of un­law­ful ar­rests, dam­ag­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice’s rep­u­ta­tion and cost­ing tax­pay­ers sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Con­gress of the Peo­ple:

Dras­tic and un­nec­es­sary

Con­gress of the Peo­ple chair­man Lons­dale Williams, in a me­dia state­ment, la­belled the SoE as “dras­tic and un­nec­es­sary.” He point­ed to a fail­ure by the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to safe­guard the na­tion.

“Our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus con­tin­ues to fal­ter de­spite the valiant ef­forts of many po­lice of­fi­cers who re­main com­mit­ted to com­bat­ing not just lo­cal crim­i­nal el­e­ments but al­so the transna­tion­al gangs now in­fil­trat­ing our bor­ders.”

Williams was al­so crit­i­cal of the role of Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley in the ex­e­cu­tion of the pol­i­cy.

“We urge the Prime Min­is­ter to re­turn home to spear­head this crit­i­cal ef­fort. His­to­ry has shown that un­der com­pe­tent lead­er­ship, such as that of a for­mer com­mis­sion­er of po­lice, sig­nif­i­cant strides were made in re­duc­ing crime and restor­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence.”

HOPE: More ques­tions

than an­swers

HOPE chair­man Steve Al­varez fur­ther ques­tioned how Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est move can al­ter the strat­e­gy for com­bat­ing crime. Among the par­ty’s queries was how polic­ing would now be dif­fer­ent un­der the SoE than be­fore.

“Why has the Gov­ern­ment been re­luc­tant to im­ple­ment a gun court to deal with the il­le­gal firearms that was a ma­jor con­cern ex­pressed in the press con­fer­ence? Why has there been no con­sid­er­able ef­fort to have state-is­sued li­cence plates on all ve­hi­cles? The wide­spread use of il­le­gal plates al­lows for crim­i­nals to sim­ply dri­ve away know­ing that their ve­hi­cle can­not be traced by the reg­is­tra­tion num­ber.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front:

A smoke­screen, not a so­lu­tion

And Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day said yes­ter­day that the de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency was an ad­mis­sion by the Gov­ern­ment that it has lost con­trol in the war against gangs.

In a state­ment, Pan­day con­tend­ed that Gov­ern­ment’s in­ac­tion over the years to stem the in­flow of il­le­gal high-pow­ered weapons through the var­i­ous ports had em­bold­ened crim­i­nals and that the lat­est ef­fort may not be as ef­fec­tive as en­vi­sioned by the au­thor­i­ties.

“This State of Emer­gency is not a so­lu­tion, it is a smoke­screen. The Gov­ern­ment is re­cy­cling the same failed strate­gies, hop­ing for dif­fer­ent re­sults, while of­fer­ing no new ideas or re­al ac­tion to deal with crime at its root. They have failed to pro­tect us, and now they seek to use ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures to hide their in­com­pe­tence.”

Bharath: Plas­ter on a

fes­ter­ing wound

For­mer min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath al­so added his voice. He said the de­ci­sion by Gov­ern­ment to call the SoE “ap­pears less like a gen­uine at­tempt to ad­dress the root caus­es of crime and more like a des­per­ate ploy to sal­vage pub­lic con­fi­dence.”

Bharath said while a state of emer­gency might tem­porar­i­ly sup­press crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, it does not re­solve sys­temic is­sues like cor­rup­tion, in­ad­e­quate polic­ing, lack of eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties, or the break­down of trust in law en­force­ment and the ju­di­cia­ry.

“It is a short-term plas­ter on a fes­ter­ing wound caused by years of in­sti­tu­tion­al degra­da­tion. This Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion un­der­scores its fail­ure to lead ef­fec­tive­ly and its will­ing­ness to use ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures to pa­per over its long-stand­ing in­ad­e­qua­cies.”