Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain why the State of Emer­gency (SoE) need­ed to be ex­tend­ed for three more months.

“We await the Gov­ern­ment’s ra­tio­nale on this, but we’ll have a lot to say in Fri­day’s Par­lia­ment de­bate on the ex­ten­sion,” Op­po­si­tion MP Kei­th Scot­land said yes­ter­day.

“I take my cue from the Op­po­si­tion Leader. We’ll have em­pir­i­cal da­ta, not just ole talk in such se­ri­ous mat­ters.”

The SoE, which had been in place since Ju­ly 18 and ex­tend­ed for three months in Par­lia­ment from Ju­ly 28, ex­pired yes­ter­day.

The Par­lia­ment’s Or­der Pa­per for Fri­day’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sit­ting list­ed a mo­tion for de­bate be­ing pi­lot­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to ex­tend the SoE by three months.

Yes­ter­day, Je­re­mie said the Gov­ern­ment is al­lowed one more SoE ex­ten­sion us­ing its sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty sup­port for pas­sage, with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

He said that in Feb­ru­ary 2026, if an­oth­er SoE is need­ed, it would re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote. This in­volves a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty from mem­bers in both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firmed the SoE ex­ten­sion dur­ing an ap­pear­ance on Crime Watch tele­vi­sion pro­gramme on Tues­day. How­ev­er, that pro­gramme lat­er post­ed that the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to ex­tend the SoE for an “ad­di­tion­al six months.”

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day it was not an ad­di­tion­al six months be­yond the last three-month SoE, but sim­ply that the SoE, which was im­ple­ment­ed in Ju­ly, would now to­tal six months. They said ac­cord­ing to the law, a sec­ond ex­ten­sion of three months can be passed with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port, once the ag­gre­gate pe­ri­od does not ex­ceed six months.

The first SoE, an­nounced by the Gov­ern­ment on Ju­ly 18, was due to threats to pub­lic safe­ty aris­ing from planned at­tacks on ju­di­cial, state, and law en­force­ment of­fi­cials by a crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing with­in the prison sys­tem. Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro rec­om­mend­ed the SoE based on this.

A num­ber of in­mates were re­moved from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison in Arou­ca to mil­i­tary bases in Ch­aguara­mas, as cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als have been placed un­der de­ten­tion or­ders.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar met with se­cu­ri­ty heads last week­end to dis­cuss whether there should be an SoE ex­ten­sion. She re­vealed that CoP Gue­var­ro made the rec­om­men­da­tion.

TTPS ar­rest­ed 3,263
over Ju­ly–Oc­to­ber SoE

Dur­ing the SoE, sta­tis­tics from the TTPS showed that be­tween Ju­ly 28 and Oc­to­ber 28, there were:

• To­tal op­er­a­tions – 7,438

• Tar­gets (Pri­or­i­ty Of­fend­ers) – 2,547

• Ve­hi­cle and premis­es search­es – 49,163

• Traf­fic op­er­a­tions – 5,000

• Peo­ple ar­rest­ed – 3,263

• Traf­fic of­fences de­tect­ed – 29,659

• Firearms seized – 192 (87 pis­tols, 48 re­volvers, 29 shot­guns, 25 ri­fles, and three air ri­fles)

• Am­mu­ni­tion seized – 2,425 rounds (in­clud­ing 1,318 rounds of 9mm and 444 rounds of 5.56mm)

• Nar­cotics seized – 8,899.65 grams of co­caine, 629,127.98 grams of mar­i­jua­na, 1,032 Ec­sta­sy pills, plus “Mol­ly”, LSD, dried mush­rooms, mar­i­jua­na trees, and seedlings.

Law en­force­ment of­fi­cials said the ex­er­cise has dealt a blow to un­der­world busi­ness, as the price of “weed” lo­cal­ly has in­creased. They al­so not­ed a slow­down in move­ment over­all due to the US mis­sion against drug car­tels, which re­cent­ly de­stroyed sev­en boats and killed 34 peo­ple al­leged­ly in­volved in il­le­gal traf­fick­ing.

Je­re­mie, in his mo­tion in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, will out­line the rea­sons for the ex­ten­sion. Gov­ern­ment sources have cit­ed con­tin­u­ing crime is­sues as well as height­ened US–T&T ten­sions with Venezuela.

The first ex­ten­sion did not re­quire Op­po­si­tion votes for pas­sage and was ap­proved with a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment’s mem­bers. The Op­po­si­tion had ab­stained from vot­ing.

The up­com­ing three-month ex­ten­sion un­til Jan­u­ary will see the lead-up to the 2026 Car­ni­val sea­son op­er­at­ing un­der an­oth­er SoE. Car­ni­val 2026 will be held on Feb­ru­ary 16 and 17.

The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced an SoE on De­cem­ber 30, 2024, fol­low­ing height­ened crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties that threat­ened pub­lic safe­ty. No cur­few was im­ple­ment­ed. That was ex­tend­ed on Jan­u­ary 13, 2025, to April 13, 2025. Car­ni­val 2025, on March 3 and 4, took place un­der an SoE, as well as the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

Busi­ness un­like­ly to be af­fect­ed — cham­bers

Mean­while, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh an­tic­i­pat­ed lit­tle neg­a­tive ef­fect from the up­com­ing SoE ex­ten­sion.

“We didn’t see any damper on busi­ness with the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed SoE or the pre­vi­ous one, so we don’t ex­pect that for the up­com­ing ex­ten­sion,” he said.

“What we did no­tice is that the SoE caused a re­duc­tion in mur­ders, se­ri­ous crimes, and rob­beries. We met re­cent­ly with the As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers from South and Cen­tral, and they gave us fig­ures at­test­ing to that. So, the coun­try has been safer, and we can ex­pect tourism to in­crease once T&T is safer. They’ve al­so as­sured us of height­ened po­lice pres­ence for the busy Christ­mas sea­son in­to Car­ni­val.”

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers pres­i­dent Vivek Char­ran said, “Our mem­bers haven’t ex­pe­ri­enced any is­sues caused by the cur­rent SoE, and if the sec­ond one is on­ly three months, we don’t ex­pect any ahead. We had Car­ni­val 2025 suc­cess­ful­ly un­der an SoE.”