Independents cite reason for lack of ZOSO Bill support

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment’s out­right re­fusal to con­sid­er amend­ments to the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill has been cit­ed by in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors as the key fac­tor be­hind their de­ci­sion not to sup­port the leg­is­la­tion in the Up­per House on Tues­day.

The Gov­ern­ment, which need­ed sup­port from at least four in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, did not re­ceive a sin­gle vote in their favour on the con­tentious Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill, 2026.

Eight of the in­de­pen­dents vot­ed against, with Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc Nish ab­stain­ing.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira said his dif­fi­cul­ty was not with the prin­ci­ple of the bill but with how the bill was draft­ed.

While he said vot­ing against the bill was not an easy de­ci­sion, he main­tained it was the right one. He said sev­er­al amend­ments were pro­posed in good faith and af­ter care­ful re­search and se­ri­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al analy­sis.

“These amend­ments were aimed at strength­en­ing the bill, nar­row­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al over­ride, clar­i­fy­ing ob­jec­tive cri­te­ria for de­clar­ing Zones, strength­en­ing civil­ian and par­lia­men­tary over­sight, safe­guard­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al role of the Pres­i­dent as Com­man­der-in-Chief of the armed forces, and en­sur­ing that mil­i­tary per­son­nel ex­er­cis­ing po­lice pow­ers are prop­er­ly trained and cer­ti­fied. These were not friv­o­lous sug­ges­tions,” Vieira said.

He added, “They were prin­ci­pled, prac­ti­cal, and de­signed to make the leg­is­la­tion more ro­bust, more de­fen­si­ble, and more like­ly to suc­ceed in prac­tice. Re­gret­tably, many of these con­cerns were large­ly un­heed­ed.”

On Tues­day night, af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said Gov­ern­ment would not be mak­ing any amend­ments to the bill, Vieira ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment with that de­ci­sion. He said dur­ing the con­tri­bu­tion a week ear­li­er by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, he was un­der the im­pres­sion that amend­ments would be en­ter­tained.

On Jan­u­ary 21, while speak­ing in the Up­per House, Sturge ac­knowl­edged a rec­om­men­da­tion from the In­de­pen­dent bench for there to be a sun­set clause or ex­pi­ra­tion date built in­to the law.

At the time, Sturge said, “Based on what has turned up, when the com­mit­tee sits and ex­am­ines the op­er­a­tion of the ZOSO op­er­a­tions, a de­ci­sion can be tak­en.”

In­de­pen­dent Sophia Chote told Guardian Me­dia there were many rea­sons why she re­ject­ed the bill.

Asked if the Gov­ern­ment’s re­fusal to en­ter­tain a sun­set clause was a con­tribut­ing fac­tor, Chote said, “I found that a lit­tle con­fus­ing be­cause I thought that when Min­is­ter Sturge had spo­ken, and I checked the Hansard my­self yes­ter­day, that he seemed to sug­gest that the Gov­ern­ment was open to hav­ing a sun­set clause put in. And that tends to be the case when­ev­er you have leg­is­la­tion which is dra­con­ian, as this would have been. They had it for the an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion, for ex­am­ple. So, I didn’t see that as be­ing some­thing that was ter­ri­bly con­tro­ver­sial to have in­clud­ed.”

Chote said she was al­so dis­ap­point­ed the AG sig­nalled that Gov­ern­ment would not be mak­ing any changes to the bill.

“I can’t speak for oth­ers, but I cer­tain­ly feel that if, as leg­is­la­tors, we are be­ing called up­on to de­cide on whether a bill is go­ing to move for­ward or not, as far as I’m con­cerned, from my per­spec­tive, I would want it to be the best bill pos­si­ble or the best act pos­si­ble that we can make. And I think cer­tain­ly, every ef­fort should be made to en­sure that what we pro­vide for the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go will be qual­i­ty leg­is­la­tion. One of Sen­a­tor Vieira’s pro­posed amend­ments, which I thought was ac­tu­al­ly quite good, was one which would have pro­tect­ed any prime min­is­ter from a pletho­ra of leg­isla­tive chal­lenges if the pow­er was used.”

Mean­while, Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc Nish, the lone ab­sten­tion dur­ing the vote, gave his ra­tio­nale for tak­ing that po­si­tion.

Mc Nish said, “I could not, in good con­science, vote ‘No’ and sig­nal a re­jec­tion of the fight against crime. Nor could I vote ‘Yes’ and en­dorse a bill that I be­lieve re­quires crit­i­cal re­fine­ment to be ef­fec­tive and just.”

He added, “My ab­sten­tion is a call to the Gov­ern­ment to re­turn to the ta­ble, re­fine the leg­isla­tive gaps iden­ti­fied, and bring back a bill that is not on­ly tough on crime but sound in law. I stand ready to sup­port a per­fect­ed ver­sion of this bill.”

De­spite this, he said he ful­ly sup­ports the in­ten­tion of the leg­is­la­tion.

“How­ev­er, as an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, my pri­ma­ry oblig­a­tion is to the Con­sti­tu­tion and the long-term sta­bil­i­ty of our le­gal frame­work. We are here to make good law, not just fast law.”

Some of the pro­posed amend­ments put for­ward by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors

Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira called for the bill to clear­ly spec­i­fy which con­sti­tu­tion­al rights un­der Sec­tions 4 and 5 would be lim­it­ed and why. He pro­posed an amend­ment to nar­row and de­fine any rights to be over­rid­den, not­ing those sec­tions pro­tect fun­da­men­tal free­doms, in­clud­ing free­dom of move­ment, equal­i­ty be­fore the law, and pro­tec­tion from cru­el pun­ish­ment.

Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira called for Clause 6 to clear­ly de­fine what con­sti­tutes “ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty,” which is the thresh­old for de­clar­ing a Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions.

Sen­a­tor Vieira called for De­fence Force per­son­nel who are to pa­trol the ZOSOs to be giv­en ap­proved law en­force­ment train­ing with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Sen­a­tor Vieira called for an amend­ment to pro­tect the Prime Min­is­ter against ju­di­cial re­view by re­quir­ing de­ci­sion-mak­ers to con­sid­er whether less in­tru­sive mea­sures out­side of lock­ing down a com­mu­ni­ty are avail­able and pro­por­tion­al to the threat.

Sen­a­tor Dr De­siree Mur­ray asked that Clause 22 of the bill be amend­ed so po­lice in the ZOSOs are man­dat­ed to wear body cam­eras. The bill says the cam­eras would be worn once avail­able.

Sen­a­tor Fran­cis Lewis, in a pre­vi­ous sit­ting, asked for a Sun­set Clause to be in­sert­ed in­to the leg­is­la­tion.

Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira called for more fre­quent ear­ly re­views and quar­ter­ly re­port­ing on the ef­fec­tive­ness of the ZOSO.

Oth­er In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors with­drew their amend­ments af­ter the AG sig­nalled he would not be chang­ing the bill.