Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

To­day’s ex­tra­or­di­nary sit­ting of Par­lia­ment to de­bate the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) will al­so con­sid­er a mo­tion to ap­prove Tetron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay, Ch­aguara­mas, as des­ig­nat­ed pris­ons.

Mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (HOR) will break their cur­rent mid-year re­cess to de­bate three mo­tions stem­ming from the Ju­ly 18 an­nounce­ment of the SoE.

At that time, the T&T0 Po­lice Ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment con­firmed the emer­gence of a co-or­di­nat­ed and high­ly dan­ger­ous or­gan­ised crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing from with­in the coun­try’s pris­ons. They re­vealed that in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als were lever­ag­ing both “in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal” net­works to plan and ex­e­cute at­tacks on key fig­ures with­in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and jus­tice sec­tors.

Short­ly af­ter that an­nounce­ment, ten in­mates from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison at Gold­en Grove were trans­ferred to De­fence Force fa­cil­i­ties in Ch­aguara­mas.

To­day’s de­bate will fo­cus on three mo­tions. The first, pi­lot­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, ad­dress­es the Au­gust 18 procla­ma­tion by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo de­clar­ing that a state of pub­lic emer­gency ex­ists. Un­der sec­tion 9(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Pres­i­dent is re­quired to de­liv­er to the Speak­er of the House a state­ment set­ting out the spe­cif­ic grounds on which the SoE is based with­in three days of the procla­ma­tion. That state­ment must then be de­bat­ed with­in 15 days of the date of the procla­ma­tion. Je­re­mie’s mo­tion notes that Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo de­liv­ered the state­ment to the Speak­er on Ju­ly 21.

Pres­i­dent’s state­ment out­lines
ris­ing vi­o­lence, threats

In her state­ment, Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo said that on Thurs­day Ju­ly 17, she was in­formed by Cab­i­net that there had been 213 homi­cides for the year to date. She was al­so told that, over the pre­vi­ous 14 days, there had been an in­crease in vi­o­lent crime, in­clud­ing deaths.

“Cab­i­net in­formed that with­in the past sev­er­al days, a num­ber of se­ri­ous vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties had tak­en place which have en­dan­gered pub­lic safe­ty. There has al­so been a resur­gence in kid­nap­ping for ran­som and in gang ac­tiv­i­ty,” the Pres­i­dent stat­ed.

“Cab­i­net fur­ther in­formed that the po­lice have re­port­ed that a large group of in­di­vid­u­als is now mo­ti­vat­ed to take ac­tion against the State at the very time when cer­tain crim­i­nal and civ­il cas­es in­volv­ing some of these in­di­vid­u­als are on­go­ing. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has ad­vised that, as a re­sult, con­di­tions ex­ist for threats to pub­lic safe­ty on an ex­ten­sive scale.”

The Pres­i­dent con­tin­ued, “Cab­i­net in­formed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in­tel­li­gence has in­formed the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty—whom I un­der­stand to be the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty—who has in turn in­formed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil that the crim­i­nal gangs in the is­lands of Trinidad and To­ba­go are like­ly to in­crease acts of vi­o­lence on a scale so ex­ten­sive that it threat­ens per­sons and will en­dan­ger pub­lic safe­ty.

“Per­sons al­ready in­car­cer­at­ed are ac­tive­ly en­gaged in co-or­di­nat­ed acts of vi­o­lence that tar­get the State and State ac­tors,” she added.

She said Cab­i­net in­formed her that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil be­lieved im­me­di­ate ac­tion was nec­es­sary, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ad­vised that such steps must be tak­en. She stat­ed that she was sat­is­fied that ac­tion had been tak­en or was im­me­di­ate­ly threat­ened on so ex­ten­sive a scale as to war­rant a state of emer­gency.

Three-month ex­ten­sion
and prison des­ig­na­tion

The sec­ond mo­tion, al­so pi­lot­ed by Je­re­mie, seeks to ex­tend the SoE for a fur­ther pe­ri­od of three months.

Un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, an SoE can be ex­tend­ed from time to time for up to six months by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Any ex­ten­sion be­yond six months re­quires a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty vote in both the House and the Sen­ate.

The third mo­tion, to be pre­sent­ed by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, seeks ap­proval for the Pris­ons (No 2) Or­der, 2025, which des­ig­nates Tetron Bar­racks and Staubles Bay as ap­proved pris­ons.

The mo­tion cites sec­tion 4(1) of the Pris­ons Act, Chap. 13:01, which gives the min­is­ter the au­thor­i­ty to ap­point any lo­ca­tion as a con­vict de­pot or prison by Or­der.

Op­po­si­tion MPs have not said how many Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment mem­bers may speak dur­ing to­day’s de­bate, al­though MPs Mar­vin Gon­za­les or Stu­art Young—who was act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al when the PNM de­clared its own SoE in De­cem­ber 2024—may con­tribute.