Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

With the State of Emer­gency of­fi­cial­ly ex­tend­ed for three months, from Mon­day night, af­ter re­ceiv­ing full back­ing from both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion bench­es in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, sev­er­al stake­hold­ers in pol­i­tics and the busi­ness sec­tor have weighed in on the move.

While some are hope­ful the SoE, which was de­clared on De­cem­ber 30, will have a ma­jor im­pact on fight­ing crime, oth­ers are still cau­tious when it comes to its use­ful­ness.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­er’s As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Roger Roach said it was all for the “greater good” of T&T.

“The TTMA sup­ports all proac­tive and in­tel­li­gence-based mea­sures to com­bat the crime scourge that is tak­ing place in Trinidad and To­ba­go. We hope that this pro­vides law en­force­ment with the ad­di­tion­al tools nec­es­sary to be more suc­cess­ful than they have been in the past to bring these crim­i­nals to jus­tice.

“This is for the greater good of the coun­try, and busi­ness will adapt and man­age dur­ing this pe­ri­od. The TTMA stands ready to as­sist the au­thor­i­ties wher­ev­er we can and play our part in the so­lu­tion.”

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance Gary Grif­fith main­tained the stance he took when the SoE was de­clared, that it was not a means to get the crime sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol.

“As I said ini­tial­ly, I see the SoE not as a crime-fight­ing tool. But both ma­jor par­ties have seen it as that, and that’s their right. In­stead of cry­ing about it, we need to cir­cle the wag­ons and try to have the SoE as pro­duc­tive as pos­si­ble,” he said.

Grif­fith said an SoE was used in 2011 by the then-Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment against his ad­vice as the then-na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er. “And it cost T&T, which is the con­cern in things like an SoE. We’ve now al­ready heard of cruise ships turn­ing back from T&T. So it can af­fect the econ­o­my, in­vest­ment, trade and these can af­fect in­fla­tion, in­crease price of goods/ser­vices and cause un­em­ploy­ment—which can all in­crease crime,” he ex­plained.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell has de­nied re­ports that cruise ships are stay­ing away from T&T. Grif­fith said that was why he rec­om­mend­ed that all of the things be­ing done by the TTPS now could and should have been done be­fore the State of Emer­gency.

He felt the use of the De­fence Force (TTDF) was very “cos­met­ic” since many of their mem­bers are on stand­by when high­er vis­i­bil­i­ty is need­ed. “How­ev­er, my biggest con­cern is that it’s be­ing seen by the pro­tec­tive ser­vices as a suc­cess based on a re­duc­tion in crime. Not so at all! The pub­lic’s fear of crime is as dam­ag­ing to a coun­try as crime it­self; no cit­i­zen’s feel­ing safer due to the SoE,” Grif­fith said. He al­so dis­put­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s view that the en­tire coun­try can’t be pa­trolled. He not­ed wide­spread pa­trols when he was po­lice com­mis­sion­er.

“The same thing Dwayne Gibbs did as CoP un­til Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­moved him. But we need to sup­port the State as they made the de­ci­sion and hope­ful­ly, the SoE can be of val­ue not on­ly to re­duce crime but re­move the per­cep­tion of fear of crime,” he added.

But Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said he has al­ready no­ticed a re­duc­tion in crime and said it was due to the SoE. “Since the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the SoE, be­fore the start of 2025, we have no­ticed an al­most 50 per cent re­duc­tion in the mur­der rate and se­ri­ous crimes. This demon­strates that the SoE is hav­ing the de­sired pos­i­tive im­pact on stamp­ing out the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.

“We hope the three-month ex­ten­sion will give the armed forces ad­e­quate time to stamp out the gang war­fare that is ram­pant in this coun­try. We ex­pect that those who are held will face the full brunt of the law. If this strat­e­gy is suc­cess­ful, we can re­turn our so­ci­ety to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy with­out the fear of crime,” Singh said.

How­ev­er, Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment po­lit­i­cal leader Garvin Nicholas said while he was in sup­port of any mea­sure aimed at restor­ing law and or­der in the coun­try, he ques­tioned why the sit­u­a­tion be­came so bad in the first place.

“In the de­bate on the need for the SoE, the Prime Min­is­ter said ‘in­tel­li­gence’ warned of loom­ing gang vi­o­lence and po­lice of­fi­cers were hid­ing be­hind locked doors in sta­tions. In oth­er words, un­der his stew­ard­ship, we’ve just about reached rock bot­tom on keep­ing cit­i­zens safe.

“I’ll al­ways sup­port any law­ful ini­tia­tive that could keep any cit­i­zen from los­ing their life, and as an ini­tia­tive of last re­sort, de­scribed by Cab­i­net mem­bers as an ex­tra­or­di­nary act, the SoE is an ini­tia­tive I sup­port be­cause it’s be­come es­sen­tial. But it’s be­come es­sen­tial be­cause law en­force­ment agen­cies and every gov­ern­ment agency as­so­ci­at­ed with law en­force­ment and hu­man de­vel­op­ment have col­lapsed un­der this Gov­ern­ment.”

Nicholas quipped, “Some sug­gest this crime scourge was al­lowed to grow and fes­ter on­ly to have the PM’s new­ly crowned suc­ces­sor an­nounce this mag­nif­i­cent, tai­lor-made, unique SoE that hits the crim­i­nals di­rect­ly and saves the day.” Nicholas rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment place greater em­pha­sis on halt­ing the flow of guns, so­cial sup­port and weed­ing out crim­i­nal el­e­ments in the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. He said, though, giv­en the gov­ern­ment’s “track record,” he was not op­ti­mistic that it could.