Behave yourselves!

Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

Be­have your­selves, or an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SOE) will be called.

That’s the warn­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued yes­ter­day evening to gangs and de­tainees, held dur­ing the State of Emer­gency, who were re­leased as it came to an end at mid­night.

“I will use every means with­in the law to make crim­i­nals, and their friends’ and fam­i­lies’ lives an ab­solute hell,” she warned.

In a post on her so­cial me­dia plat­forms yes­ter­day, hours be­fore the SoE de­clared on Ju­ly 18 last year, came to an end, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it’s time to tip the coun­try’s scales to­wards law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and that she does not care about the “tired, out­dat­ed woke, race-bait­ing, and big­ot­ed pro­pa­gan­da.”

“If any­one wants to mash up the place and burn down the coun­try, go ahead, that’s your de­mo­c­ra­t­ic choice. How­ev­er, any­one want­i­ng to do this should un­der­stand by now that I am will­ing to do what it takes to keep de­cent, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens safe, so be cer­tain that I will meet you head-on. Those who com­mit bru­tal­i­ty against law-abid­ing cit­i­zens will be met with bru­tal­i­ty from me, that’s a promise,” she said.

The SoE un­der the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion was called at the rec­om­men­da­tion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, based on a high­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed crime syn­di­cate that was op­er­a­tional both with­in and out­side of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s prison fa­cil­i­ties.

Ahead of the SoE end­ing, the Gov­ern­ment had brought and de­bat­ed leg­is­la­tion to im­ple­ment Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, via the ZOSO Bill 2026, but it failed in the Sen­ate last week.

The Prime Min­is­ter has been vo­cal about the bill’s demise in the Sen­ate, peg­ging its fail­ure on an ac­cu­sa­tion that two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors ap­proached her Gov­ern­ment to seek per­son­al favours in ex­change for the bill’s sup­port.

In her view, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment has more pow­ers un­der an SoE than it would have had un­der the ZOSO bill.

“Your UNC Gov­ern­ment was ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to di­lute and lim­it the state’s SoE pow­ers by in­tro­duc­ing the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion to use in­stead of an SoE. Your UNC Gov­ern­ment could have sim­ply called an­oth­er SoE,” she had said last week.

With the end of the SoE, it’s al­so an end to the sweep­ing pow­ers grant­ed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and cit­i­zen’s rights, which were sus­pend­ed, have been re­stored.

But while the Prime Min­is­ter said the UNC Gov­ern­ment and the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices are pre­pared for the end of the SoE, no fur­ther de­tails have been made pub­lic on se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to be tak­en by the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter warned that she would do what­ev­er it takes to keep cit­i­zens safe.

“I want the gangs and those de­tainees re­leased from prison to know that de­cent law-abid­ing cit­i­zens are fed up of your crim­i­nal­i­ty, and I will have no hes­i­ta­tion in en­act­ing an­oth­er SoE if you can­not be­have your­selves.

“You will be re­turned straight to prison, and this time, your friends and fam­i­ly who aid your crim­i­nal­i­ty will ac­com­pa­ny you. If crim­i­nals want to ter­rorise law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and their fam­i­lies, I will do every­thing legal­ly pos­si­ble to ter­rorise crim­i­nals and their fam­i­lies,” she said.

“It’s a re­al­i­ty that the com­bi­na­tion of Amer­i­can as­sis­tance to se­cure our bor­ders, the com­pe­tent lead­er­ship of CoP Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, and the in­car­cer­a­tion of the per­sons de­tained un­der the SoE us­ing PDOs, all con­tributed to 257 less mur­ders in 2025 com­pared to 2024,” she not­ed.

She took aim at the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cus­ing it of op­er­at­ing as a nar­co gov­ern­ment and of want­i­ng high­er crime num­bers to re­turn to the gov­ern­ment.

“They ap­pear very an­gry that 257 cit­i­zens are alive to­day, who would have been mur­dered if the 2024 homi­cide trend had con­tin­ued,” she said.

“Your UNC Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to bru­tal­ly de­stroy­ing the lo­cal drug mafia and the vi­o­lent gangs that they fi­nance. The nar­co in­flu­ence in gov­ern­ment af­fairs and pol­i­cy end­ed with the re­moval of the PNM on April 28th 2025,” she said.