Boodhu warns ZOSO Bill gives PM excessive powers

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Tem­po­rary Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor San­jiv Bood­hu has warned that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar should not be grant­ed sole au­thor­i­ty to de­clare Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs), cit­ing her past state­ments on crime and what he de­scribed as a pat­tern of con­fronta­tion­al gov­er­nance.

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate de­bate on the ZOSO Bill, Bood­hu ar­gued that the leg­is­la­tion con­cen­trates ex­ces­sive pow­er in the hands of the Prime Min­is­ter and pos­es a threat to con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“That is gov­er­nance by big stick,” Bood­hu said, re­fer­ring to what he de­scribed as the Prime Min­is­ter’s “bouffs” di­rect­ed at groups in­clud­ing the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, the En­er­gy Cham­ber, In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors and lo­cal gov­ern­ment work­ers.

He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing the bill to sup­press vul­ner­a­ble sec­tions of so­ci­ety.

“The same Prime Min­is­ter who ‘bouff’ us and tell us ‘be­have’, who say she go­ing to ‘buss head’, who say ‘kill them vi­o­lent­ly’—this is the per­son be­ing giv­en these pow­ers,” he added.

Bood­hu said the bill fun­da­men­tal­ly al­ters the bal­ance be­tween civ­il lib­er­ties and state au­thor­i­ty.

“The framers of the Con­sti­tu­tion un­der­stood that the great­est threats to free­dom do not arise when gov­ern­ment is weak—but when gov­ern­ment is an­gry or be­lieves that or­di­nary law is no longer suf­fi­cient,” he said.

He raised par­tic­u­lar con­cern over Sec­tion 6 of the bill, which em­pow­ers the Prime Min­is­ter, in her ca­pac­i­ty as chair of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, to uni­lat­er­al­ly de­clare any com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go a Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions.

Bood­hu ar­gued that grant­i­ng such dis­cre­tion was es­pe­cial­ly trou­bling giv­en the Prime Min­is­ter’s past pub­lic sup­port for ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings of per­sons ac­cused of drug traf­fick­ing.

He not­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter has no polic­ing back­ground and has not prac­tised law for decades, yet would be em­pow­ered to de­ter­mine whether mil­i­tary forces should oc­cu­py civil­ian com­mu­ni­ties.

Bood­hu said the bill au­tho­ris­es ac­tions pro­hib­it­ed un­der Sec­tions 4 and 5 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.