The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide clear and im­me­di­ate ex­pla­na­tions for the de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency (SoE), warn­ing that si­lence and avoid­ance are not ac­cept­able in a mo­ment of na­tion­al con­cern.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Fri­day, the Op­po­si­tion said it was “deeply alarmed” by the lev­els of vi­o­lent crime across the coun­try and reaf­firmed its sup­port for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, the De­fence Force, and oth­er se­cu­ri­ty in­sti­tu­tions.

How­ev­er, the PNM crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to pub­licly ex­plain the SoE, es­pe­cial­ly as the on­ly of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion thus far came from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“By 11:00 a.m., ap­prox­i­mate­ly four hours af­ter the Na­tion was in­formed of the SoE, there had been no of­fi­cial state­ment from the Prime Min­is­ter, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty or the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice,” the re­lease said.

How­ev­er, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie con­vened a news con­fer­ence, which start­ed at 12:32 pm.

Fur­ther the PNM ac­knowl­edged the se­ri­ous na­ture of in­tel­li­gence shared by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, who cit­ed a co­or­di­nat­ed and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing both in­side and out­side the prison sys­tem and tar­get­ing state of­fi­cials. But the Op­po­si­tion warned that such a mea­sure, which im­pacts con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and free­doms, re­quires “trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and lead­er­ship.”

The PNM called for the Gov­ern­ment to share in­for­ma­tion that does not com­pro­mise na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing the ra­tio­nale be­hind the SoE, its du­ra­tion, and the spe­cif­ic mea­sures to be im­ple­ment­ed.

The Op­po­si­tion con­firmed it is re­view­ing all avail­able pub­lic in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing the TTPS press brief­ing and the pub­lished reg­u­la­tions un­der the State of Emer­gency.

“It is our hope and ex­pec­ta­tion that by that time, the Gov­ern­ment will have ful­filled its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the na­tion by pub­licly ad­dress­ing the fac­tors that led to the de­c­la­ra­tion and by en­gag­ing cit­i­zens di­rect­ly on the way for­ward,” the PNM said.

“Mo­ments like these de­mand na­tion­al uni­ty, but they al­so de­mand re­spon­si­ble gov­er­nance. Si­lence and avoid­ance from the Ex­ec­u­tive are not op­tions.”