Opposition Leader blasts Kamla over new SoE

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Pen­ny Beck­les says there is no crime plan by the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment.

Beck­les says the de­c­la­ra­tion of yet an­oth­er State of Emer­gency by Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­firmed be­yond any rea­son­able doubt that the UNC Gov­ern­ment has com­plete­ly failed in its abil­i­ty to ad­dress crime in any mean­ing­ful ways.

"... And that (Gov­ern­ment) in­tends to erode the rights of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and to gov­ern the na­tion un­der a per­ma­nent SoE," she added, call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to ad­dress cit­i­zens to­day.

In a Face­book state­ment pri­or to a 10 am me­dia con­fer­ence by the PNM, Beck­les added, "This sec­ond SoE in un­der a year proves the Gov­ern­ment has no crime plan, on­ly ex­cus­es and au­thor­i­tar­i­an over­reach. T&T de­serves re­al so­lu­tions, not rule by emer­gency. Ei­ther the Gov­ern­ment shapes up or ships out im­me­di­ate­ly."

She added, "This Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to em­bar­rass it­self and has be­come a re­gion­al and glob­al laugh­ing­stock. It is clear that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has for­got­ten her words when the 2024 State of Emer­gency was de­clared, where she said, 'This State of Emer­gency is a shame­less po­lit­i­cal gim­mick… Let us be clear: this gov­ern­ment has no re­al plan to tack­le crime.' She has once again found her­self pre­sid­ing over and en­abling chaos with ab­solute­ly no plan, de­spite promis­ing the world in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

"This Gov­ern­ment has demon­strat­ed time and again that it prefers au­thor­i­tar­i­an mea­sures over sound, strate­gic crime man­age­ment, and once again, it has cho­sen to re­strict the free­doms of cit­i­zens rather than ad­dress the sys­temic prob­lems of crime."

Beck­les al­so pre­dict­ed that this sec­ond SoE would fol­low the path of the first.

"And like the first, it will fail spec­tac­u­lar­ly at solv­ing the un­der­ly­ing is­sues of crime. The first SoE was de­clared on Ju­ly 18, 2025, and end­ed, af­ter an ex­ten­sion, mere weeks ago on Jan­u­ary 31, 2026. What pos­si­bly could be the rea­son for call­ing an­oth­er SoE in such a short space of time?"

"It is com­mon knowl­edge that the first SoE was used to pro­tect the UNC and its mem­bers from crim­i­nal el­e­ments fol­low­ing their links to an un­holy al­liance with mem­bers of known crim­i­nal gangs in the lead-up to and fol­low­ing the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tions," Beck­les al­leged.

"It is clear to me that this sec­ond, ill-ad­vised SoE is al­so aimed at pro­tect­ing the UNC’s in­ter­ests, rather than those of T&T.

"This re­in­state­ment of the SoE comes af­ter the fail­ure of the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill, which failed be­cause it was flawed, it lacked safe­guards for hu­man rights, and it did not ad­dress the re­al needs of our com­mu­ni­ties. In­stead of tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, this in­com­pe­tent Prime Min­is­ter opt­ed to launch out­ra­geous and un­found­ed lies against In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors and the Op­po­si­tion."

She added, "One ought not to for­get the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent claims at the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing that US in­ter­ven­tion — not her first SoE — was re­spon­si­ble for an al­leged 42 per cent re­duc­tion in crime. This is not on­ly mis­lead­ing; it's an out­right lie. The facts are clear: the first SoE did not ef­fec­tive­ly re­duce crime, and nei­ther did US in­ter­ven­tion.

"This SoE’s lack of se­ri­ous­ness is ev­i­dent. It is my hope that the Prime Min­is­ter will present her­self, in­stead of hid­ing from the na­tion, and ad­dress the me­dia to­day. If she holds any re­spect for the peo­ple of T&T, she will do the right and ho­n­ourable thing and ad­dress us."

Beck­les said in 2026, T&T re­quires a tar­get­ed, com­pre­hen­sive ap­proach to crime, "one that fo­cus­es on com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment, jus­tice re­form, ed­u­ca­tion, and pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion."

"How­ev­er, this bungling Gov­ern­ment prefers to tram­ple on the rights of the peo­ple rather than pro­vide re­al so­lu­tions. A con­tin­u­ous SoE can­not be the an­swer to crime in our na­tion. We have three Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters and a Prime Min­is­ter, yet cit­i­zens awoke to this an­nounce­ment, again, and in typ­i­cal Kam­la and UNC fash­ion, made in the dead of night, with­out any of them of­fer­ing a rea­son­able ex­pla­na­tion for this SoE. This is not the Gov­ern­ment we de­serve. Every day, an­oth­er fail­ure."