DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

De­spite the ap­proved ex­ten­sion for the State of Emer­gency by an­oth­er three months, Op­po­si­tion MPs are voic­ing con­cerns about its ef­fec­tive­ness, what they con­sid­er to be a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty, and the Gov­ern­ment’s over­all han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion has called for greater trans­paren­cy and more com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­gard­ing the mea­sures be­ing im­ple­ment­ed.

Be­fore en­ter­ing the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly ex­pressed his de­sire for the SoE to suc­ceed but high­light­ed con­cerns over its ex­e­cu­tion.

“I would want to know that hav­ing de­ployed the heav­i­est am­mu­ni­tion in your ar­se­nal, that it would work. So I want to know that this SoE will tar­get the crim­i­nal el­e­ments in a way that we have nev­er been able to treat with the is­sue of crime be­fore. I main­tain my stance that the is­sue of crime is an is­sue that af­fects all of us so we need all hands on deck. I con­tin­ue to main­tain that po­si­tion, which means that we need all the lead­ers, po­lit­i­cal and out­side of the po­lit­i­cal sphere, to un­der­stand that we need to work to­geth­er,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ram­bal­ly raised con­cerns about Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to the SoE, par­tic­u­lar­ly its com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pub­lic: “I, my­self, have reser­va­tions about the man­ner in which the Gov­ern­ment has been treat­ing with the SoE in that I think there could have been more ac­count­abil­i­ty to the peo­ple. One would re­call that dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, we were over­whelmed with the amount of press con­fer­ences that the gov­ern­ment was hold­ing. I would have thought that hav­ing de­clared the State of Emer­gency on De­cem­ber 30, we would have seen more and heard more from the Min­is­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. We now have two min­is­ters in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­istry, so I thought we would have heard more from them.”

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein al­so ques­tioned the ne­ces­si­ty of the SoE, point­ing out the ex­ist­ing laws avail­able to tack­le crime. He re­marked, “I have not­ed the state­ments of Her Ex­cel­len­cy that were for­ward­ed to the Speak­er, and re­al­ly it deals with an in­ci­dent that took place out­side the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion in­volv­ing an al­leged gang leader and then some reprisal shoot­ings that took place in Priz­gar Lands. What re­al­ly stood out to me when read­ing Her Ex­cel­len­cy’s state­ment is this: It seems as though the po­lice have the in­tel­li­gence, they have the ev­i­dence, but why is the per­son not be­ing pros­e­cut­ed and charged?”

Ho­sein fur­ther ques­tioned the need for the SoE in light of ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion: “We have an act of par­lia­ment called the An­ti-Gang Act, and it crim­i­nalis­es gang mem­ber­ship and gang lead­er­ship... So, for them to come with this State of Emer­gency with these reg­u­la­tions, with­out a cur­few and so on, I mean, there are al­ready ex­ist­ing laws to deal with this mat­ter.”

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray al­so ex­pressed his doubts, not­ing the ap­par­ent fail­ure of pre­vi­ous mea­sures to ad­dress na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“The bill be­fore us to­day does not re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty, so the built-in ad­vance of the Gov­ern­ment means the Bill will pass. But, I am in­ter­est­ed to see what the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is go­ing to say in terms of the ef­fec­tive­ness of the SoE so far. My po­si­tion is that $60B lat­er, and we have to go back to the draw­ing board with a State of Emer­gency, re­al­ly shows the fail­ure of the State in terms of man­ag­ing the air, sea, land is­sues around na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in 10 years. Now, in the eleventh hour, you bring this SoE to try and reel things back.”

De­spite his con­cerns, Paray made it clear that he would sup­port mea­sures that could save lives: “I did make a com­mit­ment dur­ing the bud­get de­bate last year that I would sup­port any leg­is­la­tion that comes be­fore the Par­lia­ment that would save lives. So, if the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty can come and con­vince me to­day that he’s moved guns and am­mu­ni­tion off the street, I think every­one will save a life.”