Last Wednes­day, the State of Emer­gency (SoE) was ex­tend­ed for an­oth­er three months with ef­fect from June 18th. De­spite the fact that our Con­sti­tu­tion makes pro­vi­sion at sec­tions 7, 8, 9 and 10 for SoEs to be de­clared, there was a fair amount of pub­lic dis­cus­sion about chal­leng­ing the cur­rent SoE on the grounds that an ex­ten­sion could be deemed un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

The com­pet­ing nar­ra­tives in­volved (i) con­tin­u­a­tion of the SoE on the ba­sis of con­tin­ued dis­man­tling of crim­i­nal net­works, and (ii) any ex­ten­sion of the SoE had noth­ing to do with any crime prob­lem. This lat­ter ar­gu­ment is fan­ci­ful.

Any­one who has lived in this coun­try for the last three decades will know that the crime prob­lem has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed bad­ly. To say that this SoE ex­ten­sion has noth­ing to do with crime is di­vorced from re­al­i­ty. Crime sta­tis­tics have got­ten worse over the years and the prob­lem has en­trenched it­self in­to our so­cial fab­ric and it re­quires brute force to ex­tract it.

Those sta­tis­tics have shown clear and mea­sur­able re­duc­tions over the last eleven months. Those sta­tis­tics were used to mea­sure the per­for­mance of the PNM gov­ern­ment over the last ten years. Now there is a me­dia shift to move away from those sta­tis­tics, just when they are be­gin­ning to show sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions and to em­brace the more qual­i­ta­tive emo­tion­al re­sponse of “fear of crime”. The re­al­i­ty is that “fear of crime” has al­ways been here over the last three decades, while the sta­tis­tics have, un­til now, re­mained neg­a­tive. Those sta­tis­tics are now im­prov­ing.

There have been ar­gu­ments about the abuse of our Con­sti­tu­tion in ex­tend­ing this SoE by mak­ing ref­er­ence to com­par­isons with Ja­maica in re­la­tion to the re­cent judg­ment of the Supreme Court of Ja­maica against the re­peat­ed use of states of emer­gency in spec­i­fied com­mu­ni­ties in Ja­maica.

The con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the con­tin­ued use of the states of pub­lic emer­gency (SOPE) was pub­licly cit­ed here in ref­er­enc­ing the Ja­maican case of Day­ton Camp­bell v At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Ja­maica [2025] JM­FC Full 2. That case in­volved the re­peat­ed use of procla­ma­tions of SOPEs on Jan­u­ary 18, March 18, Sep­tem­ber 23, 2018; April 30, Ju­ly 7, Sep­tem­ber 15, 2019; Jan­u­ary 26, June 14, 2020; No­vem­ber 14, 2021; June 17, No­vem­ber 15, De­cem­ber 6, De­cem­ber 28, 2022; and Feb­ru­ary 13, 2023 in spec­i­fied com­mu­ni­ties in Ja­maica.

This da­ta is gross­ly dif­fer­ent from what has tran­spired in T&T. There were mul­ti­ple procla­ma­tions of SOPEs in Ja­maica be­tween Jan­u­ary 18, 2018 and Feb­ru­ary 13, 2023. There was no par­lia­men­tary ex­ten­sion of these re­peat­ed pe­ri­ods of emer­gency and so the is­sue of the abuse of the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers arose be­cause none of those SOPE procla­ma­tions in Ja­maica were ever ex­tend­ed by Par­lia­ment.

In Ja­maica, un­der sec­tion 20 of their Con­sti­tu­tion, a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty in both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment is re­quired to ex­tend a procla­ma­tion by the Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al and that re­quire­ment was nev­er sat­is­fied. That led to a re­peat­ed use of procla­ma­tions of SOPEs for mul­ti­ple 14-day pe­ri­ods at a time, which was deemed un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

In T&T, this Gov­ern­ment has nev­er at­tempt­ed to cir­cum­vent Par­lia­ment in the ex­ten­sion of our SoE be­cause it has strict­ly com­plied with our Con­sti­tu­tion.

The T&T Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides for a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty for an ex­ten­sion of an ini­tial 15-day pres­i­den­tial procla­ma­tion that has de­clared a SoE. Ex­ten­sions can last for up to three months at a time and no more than six months in the ag­gre­gate.

There has been no dodg­ing of the par­lia­men­tary re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to go to Par­lia­ment to seek an ex­ten­sion.

In our Con­sti­tu­tion, pro­vi­sion is made for a state­ment to be sent by the Pres­i­dent to be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment when the SoE com­mences. Ja­maica does not have such a pro­vi­sion for when their Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al grants the ini­tial procla­ma­tion that lasts for 14 days, so there is no par­lia­men­tary re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for min­is­ters to de­bate a state­ment there. Our min­is­ters have such a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty here.

Democ­ra­cy is alive and well here, as there is a lot of com­men­tary about the SoE be­ing “un­con­sti­tu­tion­al”, which is mis­placed. Nev­er­the­less, peo­ple are free to al­lege this with­out any ad­verse con­se­quences. There have been march­es, pub­lic meet­ings, can­dle­light vig­ils, and free­dom of ex­pres­sion in the me­dia and on so­cial me­dia that have ranged from the sa­cred to the pro­fane.

Ja­maica even­tu­al­ly ad­dressed their prob­lem by amend­ing their 2017 Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion in 2023, which did not re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty un­der their con­sti­tu­tion. Such leg­is­la­tion failed here in the Sen­ate be­cause the re­quired con­sti­tu­tion­al three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty was not at­tained.

Our hu­man rights pro­vi­sions are based on the Cana­di­an Bill of Rights 1960, while in 2011, Ja­maica amend­ed their Con­sti­tu­tion to cre­ate a new Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Hu­man Rights and Free­doms.

Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an Hon­orary Pro­fes­sor of The UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at The UWI. He was se­lect­ed by the THA to guide the dis­cus­sions on To­ba­go au­ton­o­my.