Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Or­gan­ised crime and il­lic­it flows of mon­ey are prop­ping up Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my and pro­vid­ing jobs and ben­e­fits with­in many com­mu­ni­ties, ac­cord­ing to In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Josh Dray­ton.

Dray­ton made the point when he spoke in Tues­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOS) bill. De­bate con­tin­ues to­day.

Dray­ton said he sup­port­ed the bill, but with the caveat that it should be pi­lot­ed as an ex­per­i­ment for two to three years, with a sun­set clause, “and mon­i­tored to see how it goes, and then you can make that change.” He added that a sun­set clause spec­i­fy­ing a fixed time pe­ri­od dif­fered from a “from time to time” pro­vi­sion, to which the bill would be sub­ject.

Dray­ton is a re­searcher in an­ti-cor­rup­tion, gov­er­nance, open gov­ern­ment and pub­lic pol­i­cy. He teach­es pub­lic pol­i­cy and an­ti-cor­rup­tion at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

He said the ar­eas where zones may be are where there is a par­al­lel sys­tem of gov­ern­ment with as­sets, pro­tec­tion and jus­tice and are high­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed. Dray­ton not­ed some gangs even con­trol cars ply­ing as taxis in their ar­eas.

While there are lead­er­ship struc­tures and some as­sets may be con­cen­trat­ed in some ar­eas, it is known that be­yond those num­bers, there are oth­er el­e­ments that are a bit more flu­id in the East-West cor­ri­dor, as well as in To­ba­go.

“It’s known,” Dray­ton con­firmed.

While zones will se­cure spe­cif­ic spaces, he not­ed that they are al­ways evolv­ing and flu­id.

“There are crim­i­nals who are con­nect­ed via their fam­i­lies, re­la­tion­ships and friend­ships with var­i­ous el­e­ments through­out T&T and the re­gion. We’re speak­ing about transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.”

Dray­ton re­ferred to the “Un­holy Trin­i­ty” of guns, mon­ey, and drugs, not­ing that an or­gan­i­sa­tion is re­quired to con­trol all three, which in turn dri­ves or­gan­ised crime. He said a gov­ern­ment or law en­force­ment has to re­duce as­sets of crim­i­nal groups, plus their gun and drug flows.

Civ­il as­set re­cov­ery via “fol­low­ing the mon­ey” is al­so need­ed.

“We’re in a re­al­ly bad state as a coun­try and as a re­gion,” he said.

“It has be­come so dire in some of these com­mu­ni­ties that per­sons are un­able to sur­vive with­out the in­put of these gangs. Many would know about ‘dons’ (crime boss­es) in Ja­maica; we see the same things hap­pen­ing here with the zones,” he added.

Not­ing that crim­i­nals move and zones may be flu­id, Dray­ton sought clar­i­ty on what a zone con­sti­tutes: whether it is a high-crime area for cer­tain types of crimes or on­ly for mur­ders. He al­so ex­pressed con­cern about ver­i­fi­ca­tion of peo­ple do­ing le­git­i­mate busi­ness in zones.

Dray­ton not­ed Ja­maica did not have that much suc­cess with zones as op­posed to an SoE.

Bill will be test­ed in courts, says Al-Rawi

Op­po­si­tion PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, who queried a num­ber of the bill’s as­pects, in­di­cat­ed that it will be ar­gued in the courts. He al­so cit­ed dif­fer­ences be­tween Ja­maica’s ZOSOs mod­el and T&T’s leg­is­la­tion.

While the bill sug­gests a cor­don and cur­few, he said T&T had the Emer­gency Pow­ers and the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Act, which al­lowed parts of T&T to be tak­en over and man­aged and for com­pen­sa­tion to be paid.

“But this law doesn’t al­low for com­pen­sa­tion.”

Al-Rawi said Ja­maica’s zones law—which he said was for­mu­lat­ed by a col­league of his—had an in­de­pen­dent com­mis­sion com­pris­ing gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion mem­bers, and T&T’s law doesn’t have that.

Ja­maica’s com­mis­sion ex­am­ined com­plaints against se­cu­ri­ty forces, but T&T has the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty for com­plaints against po­lice.
Nor does T&T’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil in­clude an op­po­si­tion mem­ber, as Ja­maica’s does; ad­di­tion­al­ly, the pro­posed So­cial Trans­for­ma­tion Com­mit­tee, in­tend­ed to work with com­mu­ni­ties, seemed in­evitably to fall un­der min­is­te­r­i­al con­trol, he not­ed.

He said the re­cent­ly passed T&T law al­lows a Jus­tice of the Peace to grant bail im­me­di­ate­ly—but the zones bill didn’t sug­gest that.

Al-Rawi al­so blamed the PNM’s in­ac­tion to im­ple­ment a sim­i­lar bill it had in 2017 on then op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s non-re­sponse to let­ters the PNM gov­ern­ment wrote her on that bill.
“The bill was dead in the womb!” he said.