Gail Alexan­der

Horn toot­ing and head­light flash­ing to protest the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ex­ten­sion are ex­pect­ed around T&T to­day, but stop­ping to do that around the Red House in Port-of-Spain might be a prob­lem.

Trade unions that are al­so against the SoE ex­ten­sion re­main firm they’ll be un­der­tak­ing their planned Free­dom Day protest ahead in an in­no­v­a­tive way against Gov­ern­ment’s modus operan­di.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will this af­ter­noon pi­lot the mo­tion for the SoE ex­ten­sion un­til No­vem­ber 30.

It can be passed by Gov­ern­ment votes alone. A Par­lia­ment sit­ting has been spe­cial­ly con­vened for this mat­ter, since Par­lia­ment was on re­cess up to yes­ter­day.

Af­ter the Op­po­si­tion ques­tioned the need for the ex­ten­sion, say­ing it doesn’t sup­port this, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day said the Op­po­si­tion is com­ing to Par­lia­ment with an open mind and would lis­ten to Gov­ern­ment’s ar­gu­ments to make a de­ci­sion on the is­sue.

But she called for the pub­lic to let the Op­po­si­tion know their feel­ings by the horn toot­ing and “head­light­ing” to­day.

She said al­though the SoE out­laws pave­ment protests, “we still can show our op­po­si­tion to this tyran­ni­cal move.”

Yes­ter­day, po­lice told Guardian Me­dia there was noth­ing to cur­tail mo­torists from blow­ing horns and turn­ing on head­lights – as long as they weren’t as­sem­bled or had ral­ly for­mats.

Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials in­di­cat­ed sim­i­lar­ly, but couldn’t com­ment on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of noise af­fect­ing busi­ness in­side the Red House.

Dur­ing pre­vi­ous protests, the noise on the pave­ment out­side was heard in­side the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber.

Of­fi­cials not­ed Reg­u­la­tion 38 (12) (1) of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Reg­u­la­tions, which stat­ed horns are on­ly al­lowed to be used to give warn­ing of a po­si­tion of a mo­tor ve­hi­cle and al­so pro­hibits the use of horns in any mu­nic­i­pal ar­eas from 9 pm to 5.30 am. They al­so cit­ed the Traf­fic Con­trol Or­der (2) from 1990 against park­ing, stop­ping or wait­ing on streets sur­round­ing the Red House and 2010 law de­bar­ring ve­hi­cles parked in those ar­eas un­less the per­son is an MP, his agent or a diplo­mat and their ve­hi­cle car­ries the spe­cif­ic no­ti­fi­ca­tion of this.

Dr Row­ley didn’t re­spond yes­ter­day to texted queries on the UNC’s state­ments, in­clud­ing ac­cu­sa­tions that he had flip-flopped on SoE po­si­tions and that the SoE was need­ed to con­trol union protests and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion op­po­nents in cam­paign­ing.

How­ev­er, a PNM of­fi­cial said, “Watch we Wednes­day. See who go be mak­ing the ‘noise’.”

They not­ed COVID is­sues af­fect­ing oth­er is­lands where vac­ci­na­tions have been low and cas­es high, the lat­est be­ing The Ba­hamas where the hos­pi­tal sys­tem is over­whelmed.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi on Mon­day said the SoE can be can­celled at any time. He said Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion was da­ta-dri­ven and that the SoE was nec­es­sary to en­sure “undis­turbed” vac­ci­na­tion roll­out and re­cov­ery of “op­er­a­tional­i­ty.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said the Op­po­si­tion’s lat­est po­si­tion ap­peared to be that it was wait­ing for word from Gov­ern­ment.

“But Gov­ern­ment hasn’t yet told us why they need the SoE ex­tend­ed. Not that I’m against it, but they need to be more trans­par­ent on rea­son­ing.

“The on­ly thing I can think of is that the SoE al­lows po­lice to en­ter pri­vate prop­er­ty un­like pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions, which po­lice sug­gest­ed wasn’t ap­pro­pri­ate to en­ter pri­vate prop­er­ty. If that’s the rea­son for the SoE, I have no prob­lem but the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment about the SoE ‘as­sist­ing the mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve’ is a flim­sy ex­cuse,” Ra­goonath said,

Mean­while, Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ozzi War­wick called on work­ers to sup­port the trade unions’ Free­dom Day geared to “fight gov­ern­ment op­pres­sion, lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty and dic­ta­to­r­i­al ten­den­cies,” when­ev­er it’s held.

“And it’ll be held. We’ll move un­de­terred. The peo­ple’s voic­es must be heard. Hid­ing be­hind an SoE won’t save Gov­ern­ment,” War­wick em­pha­sised.

Unions are work­ing to­wards an “in­no­v­a­tive” Free­dom Day ef­fort.

War­wick added, “It’s one thing to de­clare an SoE dur­ing a pan­dem­ic for pub­lic health mea­sures, but while re­mov­ing cit­i­zens’ rights and free­dom of ex­pres­sion, they’re re­struc­tur­ing state en­ter­pris­es and re­trench­ing work­ers and peo­ple can’t speak out on it. They won’t even be able to re­spond on 2022 Bud­get’s mea­sures.

“We al­so have to pay at­ten­tion to hav­ing this kind of pow­er in the hands of a leader who every week bul­lies cit­i­zens - and me­dia - speak­ing as if his word alone must be fol­lowed. That could be dan­ger­ous.’’