Prof Hamid Ghany

Over the years, states of emer­gency (SoEs) have been de­clared for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons.

There have been two SoEs in our his­to­ry where it was nec­es­sary to de­tain per­sons so that Par­lia­ment could en­act leg­is­la­tion that the State con­sid­ered im­por­tant. The first SoE was de­clared on March 9th, 1965, by Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al Sir Solomon Ho­choy, on the ad­vice of PM Dr Er­ic Williams, in se­lect­ed ar­eas of the sug­ar belt to ad­dress sug­ar in­dus­try strikes and to al­low the gov­ern­ment to en­act the In­dus­tri­al Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Act (ISA).

De­ten­tion or­ders were made for var­i­ous per­sons. One very sig­nif­i­cant or­der was made for the renowned Trinida­di­an pub­lic in­tel­lec­tu­al CLR James, who had ar­rived in the coun­try just af­ter the SoE was pro­claimed. This led to an amend­ment on March 12th, 1965, which was done specif­i­cal­ly to place James un­der house ar­rest in Barataria.

Par­lia­ment sat on March 18th and 19th, 1965, to pass the ISA and the SoE was lift­ed on March 23rd, 1965.

The sec­ond SoE to fa­cil­i­tate sit­tings of Par­lia­ment to en­act spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion was made on Au­gust 3rd, 1995. It was con­fined to the City of Port-of-Spain. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a de­ten­tion or­der was made for on­ly one per­son, Speak­er Oc­c­ah Sea­paul, to de­tain her at her of­fi­cial res­i­dence on Mary Street, St Clair. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in her ab­sence, passed the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) (No. 2) Bill 1995 on Au­gust 4th to cre­ate a pro­ce­dure for the re­moval of the Speak­er from of­fice.

On Au­gust 7th, 1995, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Eck­stein ad­vised the House that the SoE in the City of POS had been re­voked. Speak­er Sea­paul was sus­pend­ed right af­ter, un­der the new amend­ment.

SoEs have been pro­claimed for se­ri­ous threats to the po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty of the State on two oc­ca­sions, name­ly April 21, 1970 (which was a re­sponse to quell the Black Pow­er up­ris­ing against the PNM gov­ern­ment) and Ju­ly 28th, 1990 (which was a re­sponse to an at­tempt­ed over­throw of the NAR gov­ern­ment by the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen on Ju­ly 27th). On both oc­ca­sions, there was a need for Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) be­cause of the na­ture of the threats that in­volved state of­fi­cials and pub­lic safe­ty.

There have been two SoEs that have dealt specif­i­cal­ly with in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, name­ly the SoE de­clared on Oc­to­ber 19th, 1971, and the SoE de­clared on No­vem­ber 4th, 1976. The for­mer was na­tion­al in scale, for which an Emer­gency Pow­ers Act (No. 29 of 1971), that em­pow­ered the State to un­der­take a va­ri­ety of ac­tions, was passed by Par­lia­ment.

The lat­ter was con­fined on­ly to the then Gen­er­al Post Of­fice on Wright­son Road, POS, be­cause there were mail sort­ing de­lays at the Post Of­fice ahead of the Christ­mas rush. The pres­i­den­tial state­ment spoke of “un­law­ful in­dus­tri­al ac­tion” and an “alarm­ing pile-up of mail”. Both SoEs were di­rect­ed against the trade union move­ment.

There was one SoE, de­clared on Oc­to­ber 23, 1977, that was de­signed to ad­dress air­port op­er­a­tional chal­lenges and was con­fined on­ly to the Pi­ar­co and Crown Point Air­ports af­ter the com­ple­tion of in­ves­ti­ga­tions fol­low­ing the crash of a Cubana Air­lines air­craft off Bar­ba­dos in Sep­tem­ber 1976. Those in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed “se­ri­ous de­fi­cien­cies in our sys­tem of air se­cu­ri­ty.”

There was one SoE that was de­clared na­tion­al­ly on May 15, 2021, to ad­dress the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. This was de­signed to per­mit the gov­ern­ment to im­pose cur­fews, as the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance did not em­pow­er the State to im­pose cur­fews.

There have been four SoEs de­clared to ad­dress the wors­en­ing crime prob­lem. The first was on Au­gust 21st, 2011; the sec­ond was on De­cem­ber 30th, 2024; the third was on Ju­ly 18th, 2025; and the fourth was on March 3rd, 2026. In all four, PDOs have been nec­es­sary to de­tain per­sons who were deemed to be threats to pub­lic safe­ty.

Not every SoE will re­quire PDOs be­cause one has to match the pur­pose of the SoE with the threat be­ing faced by the State. How­ev­er, the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides as fol­lows at sec­tion 7(2):

“(2) With­out prej­u­dice to the gen­er­al­i­ty of sub­sec­tion (1), reg­u­la­tions made un­der that sub­sec­tion may, sub­ject to sec­tion 11, make pro­vi­sion for the de­ten­tion of per­sons.”

Any reg­u­la­tions made un­der an SoE may pos­si­bly make pro­vi­sion for the de­ten­tion of per­sons. The process op­er­ates on the ba­sis of the po­lice ap­proach­ing the rel­e­vant min­is­ter and af­ter that, the min­is­ter may make a PDO based on the re­quest from the po­lice. This has been a time-worn process.

Notwith­stand­ing the ex­is­tence of any SoE, the court is al­ways avail­able to any­one to seek re­dress. The fact that so many per­sons are talk­ing about ac­cess­ing the courts and con­sult­ing at­tor­neys while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly cry­ing dic­ta­tor­ship bor­ders on hi­lar­i­ty if it were not so se­ri­ous.

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.