Akash Sama­roo

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James yes­ter­day crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the an­nounce­ment of a na­tion­wide State of Emer­gency (SoE), say­ing he could un­der­stand why the Op­po­si­tion Leader sub­se­quent­ly la­belled the crime fight­ing tac­tic as “po­lit­i­cal gim­mick­ry.”

Dr James made the com­ment yes­ter­day, as he said he was still not en­tire­ly sure why the SoE was de­clared.

“I’m sure that the Gov­ern­ment has not giv­en us all the in­for­ma­tion that they have with re­spect to gang war­fare. It seems to me that the Gov­ern­ment has not been good at all in ex­plain­ing the cir­cum­stances. And I re­al­ly take the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s po­si­tion that this is gim­mick­ry in the ab­sence of prop­er in­for­ma­tion,” James said.

James said it seemed as if act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald were not on the same page on Mon­day.

“For ex­am­ple, Mr Hinds, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, what did he do? Did he not give a dif­fer­ent ex­pla­na­tion as to the rea­son for the SoE than Stu­art Young? Stu­art Young talked about gang reprisals and Hinds had been ref­er­enc­ing crime sta­tis­tics for 2024. And Hinds was about to an­swer a ques­tion posed to him and Young in­ter­vened to pre­vent Hinds from an­swer­ing. So quite clear­ly, there are dif­fer­ences of un­der­stand­ing and opin­ion be­tween at least Stu­art Young and Hinds,” James said.

He said there was al­so con­fu­sion over the ab­sence of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“Then we have the mat­ter of Dr Row­ley not show­ing up and Min­is­ter Young say­ing that the rea­son was that it was not ap­pro­pri­ate. And then they said his broth­er died. So, on one hand you have two min­is­ters who said they were ap­pro­pri­ate­ly there be­cause one is the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and the oth­er is act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, and they could han­dle the mat­ter. And then there’s a dif­fer­ent ex­pla­na­tion that the PM’s broth­er died, and he is­sued a Face­book state­ment,” James added.

He said the least the Gov­ern­ment could do was be con­sis­tent with their mes­sag­ing.

“So, when Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar casts doubt on their ex­pla­na­tions and deems the SoE as gim­mick­ry, you have to say there is some sort of cred­i­bil­i­ty to what she is say­ing. The Gov­ern­ment has the pub­lic bounc­ing up and down like a yo-yo,” James con­tend­ed.

Mean­while, Dr In­dera Sage­wan said Mon­day’s an­nounce­ment ap­peared to be a pan­ic move by the Gov­ern­ment and a last-ditch ef­fort to bring crime un­der con­trol.

Not­ing it was some­thing that should have been done soon­er, she said, “The act­ing AG said that since they came in­to Gov­ern­ment they have been con­sid­er­ing a SoE, but it took you nine years to be able to de­cide you re­al­ly need to do it? Imag­ine if some­thing had been done ear­li­er, how many lives could have been saved.”

Sage­wan al­so took is­sue with Gov­ern­ment not hav­ing the SoE reg­u­la­tions in place be­fore call­ing a me­dia brief­ing. She said all Min­is­ters Young and Hinds did on Mon­day was to alert the crim­i­nals.

“It has giv­en the crim­i­nal el­e­ments the time to be able to go in­to hid­ing, hide all these high-pow­ered guns, so you re­al­ly put them on no­tice that this is what we are look­ing for, so you gave them time to se­cure it,” she said.

She said giv­en the ex­tra pow­ers grant­ed to the po­lice, par­tic­u­lar­ly to en­ter premis­es with­out a war­rant, it rais­es more con­cerns about po­lice im­posters.

“If in the mid­dle of the night, peo­ple look­ing like po­lice knock on our doors and they present a badge or doc­u­men­ta­tion pur­port­ing to be le­gal, how are we to know if this is le­git­i­mate?” she ques­tioned.

Dr Sage­wan said there is lit­tle the po­lice can say to give peo­ple the com­fort that this will not hap­pen.