Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to come out pub­licly and ex­plain why the coun­try is un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Speak­ing at a pub­lic meet­ing at the Mal­abar Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Thurs­day night, Beck­les called out Per­sad-Bisses­sar for not de­tail­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s rea­son­ing for call­ing the SoE to the pub­lic since it was an­nounced last Fri­day.

“Where is our Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter? Where is she? If it is that we ac­cept this ar­gu­ment that crime is out of con­trol, and it was nec­es­sary to take this ac­tion, okay, so the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice went and he spoke first, but what hap­pened af­ter that? Not on­ly that, if you are fol­low­ing the ar­gu­ment, the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty (Roger Alexan­der) said that the threat has been erad­i­cat­ed. So, you need to ask your­self, if you erad­i­cate the threat, is there still a need for the State of Emer­gency?”

In a me­dia re­lease on Ju­ly 18, the Prime Min­is­ter said af­ter re­ceiv­ing an in­tel­li­gence re­port from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro on Ju­ly 17, she di­rect­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to take the req­ui­site steps and ad­vise Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo to de­clare the SoE.

“I will not stand idly by for years, months, weeks or even days while a mi­nor­i­ty of il­le­gal­ly armed in­di­vid­u­als act in con­cert to in­tim­i­date the peo­ple of T&T. I will not tol­er­ate a resur­gence of kid­nap­pings for ran­som and oth­er heinous crimes ini­ti­at­ed by gangs. I will not al­low these el­e­ments of so­ci­ety to con­tin­ue to ter­rorise and trau­ma­tise law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and to wreak hav­oc in our land,” she stat­ed.

The me­dia re­lease came af­ter Je­re­mie held a me­dia brief­ing, say­ing the threat was vi­able and had the SoE not been called there would have been chaos. Hours ear­li­er, Guavar­ro said there was a plot be­ing or­gan­ised from with­in the prison that re­vealed top pub­lic of­fi­cials were be­ing tar­get­ed by a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate.

But Beck­les said it was baf­fling that the CoP was the on­ly face the pub­lic was see­ing dur­ing the dri­ve.

“With such a se­ri­ous is­sue tak­ing place in Trinidad and To­ba­go, you have ab­solute­ly no pres­ence of the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter to ex­plain to the coun­try why was this de­ci­sion tak­en by your Gov­ern­ment. It is very easy to say that the Com­mis­sion­er came and the Com­mis­sion­er spoke, but who is go­ing on Mon­day to de­bate the ex­ten­sion of the SoE? It is not the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, it is the Gov­ern­ment and it is the Op­po­si­tion,” Beck­les said.

Par­lia­ment will come off its break on Mon­day to de­bate the ex­ten­sion of the SoE for an ini­tial three months. The Gov­ern­ment will be able to pass the ex­ten­sion with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port, as it re­quires 26 votes and has 28.