Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Tem­po­rary Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Se­nior Coun­sel Lar­ry Lal­la says, de­spite the State of Emer­gency (SoE), cit­i­zens can still protest.

Speak­ing at a town hall meet­ing on the SoE at the Tu­na­puna Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Fri­day evening, Lal­la urged those gath­ered not to be in­tim­i­dat­ed by the emer­gency pow­ers.

“The State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions that have been passed so far do not and can­not in­ter­fere with your right to free­dom of ex­pres­sion, once it does not touch on the is­sue of threat­en­ing pub­lic safe­ty.”

He added that to have a march or protest, all some­one has to do is in­form the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. He said there is leg­isla­tive sup­port al­low­ing for protests to take place dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

“With all our dif­fi­cul­ties, we have our right to free­dom of ex­pres­sion to protest; no­body could take that away from us, once we do it with­in the pre­scrip­tion of the law.”

Lal­la was part of a pan­el in­clud­ing fel­low Se­nior Coun­sel Kei­th Scot­land, San­jiv Bood­hu and Janelle John-Bates.

Scot­land said that the failed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill was re­placed with the SoE, which the pan­el claimed was the Gov­ern­ment’s plan B.

Scot­land, in re­sponse to a ques­tion from a mem­ber of the crowd, said the pur­pose of the SoE, par­tic­u­lar­ly Sec­tions 4 and 11 of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, was to force the pop­u­la­tion to be­come docile.

“You will be so beat­en in­to sub­mis­sion that even if the law does not come in­to place, you will think twice about crit­i­cis­ing this Gov­ern­ment. They will beat us in­to be­com­ing so con­trite that peo­ple would be­come very coy and very par­ti­san and be­come very cau­tious be­fore they ut­ter one word of dis­sent against this Gov­ern­ment.”

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les sought to jog the at­ten­dees’ minds, call­ing on them to re­mem­ber that of the hun­dreds ar­rest­ed dur­ing the 2011 SoE, less than 10 per cent were charged.

She said Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, in Jan­u­ary, praised good po­lice work for the re­duc­tion in crime and not the SoE and ques­tioned why an­oth­er one was called not too long af­ter.

“We sup­port strong ac­tion against crime. We sup­port our cit­i­zens, but fight­ing crime must nev­er be­come con­trol­ling cit­i­zens. I have said to the Prime Min­is­ter over and over, Trinidad and To­ba­go is not a kinder­garten school where you want to tell them, ‘be­have yuh­self, be­have yuh­self’. A strong democ­ra­cy must con­front vi­o­lence with­out si­lenc­ing its peo­ple. Once free­dom of ex­pres­sion is weak­ened, every oth­er free­dom be­comes frag­ile.”

She said the du­ty of the op­po­si­tion is to strike that bal­ance where the voic­es of the peo­ple are not si­lenced, and their civ­il lib­er­ties are not re­moved in ex­change for se­cu­ri­ty.

Much like the stand-your-ground con­sul­ta­tions, Bood­hu said the SoE is not need­ed, de­scrib­ing it as “just wild­ness” by the Gov­ern­ment. He ques­tioned the cost of the last SoE re­gard­ing the cost of the tri­bunal and oth­er pay­ments.

John-Bates al­so raised the is­sue of costs, not just fi­nan­cial­ly, but emo­tion­al­ly, on the coun­try go­ing in­to a back-to-back states of emer­gency.

The town hall al­so saw the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of Can­dice “War­rior Princess” St Ed­wards and Kendall Wint, who “came back home” af­ter vot­ing for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in the last elec­tion.

This prompt­ed Scot­land to say the Our Fa­ther prayer, ask­ing the two to for­give the PNM of its tres­pass­es.