Business community sees latest SoE as stopgap measure

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A heavy-hand­ed tool, a stop­gap mea­sure and a tourism dis­in­cen­tive - but a grim ne­ces­si­ty.

That's how busi­ness groups see the State of Emer­gency an­nounced by Gov­ern­ment on Tues­day - and one group says it's vi­tal the SoE doesn't pe­nalise the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said his cham­ber views the SoE, "... with a sense of grim ne­ces­si­ty. The re­cent rapid uptick in mur­ders and vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty has cre­at­ed an en­vi­ron­ment of fear that is in­com­pat­i­ble with a thriv­ing so­ci­ety...A na­tion can­not pros­per when its peo­ple are hes­i­tant to move around freely in pub­lic spaces or con­duct busi­ness af­ter hours."

Ma­haraj said the cost of the cur­rent crime wave has be­come a bur­den.

"Busi­ness own­ers in Ch­agua­nas have been forced spend ad­di­tion­al sums for se­cu­ri­ty, while hav­ing less foot traf­fic and in some cas­es short­ened op­er­at­ing hours. This 'crime tax' sti­fles in­no­va­tion and af­fects eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery...," he said.

"We recog­nise that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil’s de­ci­sion fol­lows a dis­turb­ing trend of reprisal shoot­ings and or­gan­ised gang ac­tiv­i­ty that, if left unchecked, would con­tin­ue to desta­bilise the econ­o­my - we un­der­stand the ra­tio­nale be­hind im­ple­ment­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures to re­store a base­line of law and or­der. How­ev­er, the cham­ber views the SoE as a heavy-hand­ed tool that has be­come the on­ly mea­sure avail­able due to a lack of leg­isla­tive con­sen­sus.

"Fail­ure to pass the spe­cial zones leg­is­la­tion has left the state with few al­ter­na­tives be­tween stan­dard polic­ing and full-scale SoE. While we sup­port the im­me­di­ate need for safe­ty, we urge T&T's lead­er­ship to move be­yond these cy­cles of emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions."

He added, "We must strive for a fu­ture where our safe­ty is en­sured through con­sis­tent, in­tel­li­gence-led en­force­ment and ro­bust leg­is­la­tion that al­lows for in­ter­ven­tions in hot spot ar­eas with­out sus­pen­sion of nor­mal life for the en­tire pop­u­la­tion."

Ma­haraj said the cham­ber sup­ports de­ci­sive ac­tion against crim­i­nals but urged Gov­ern­ment to en­sure these mea­sures are ex­e­cut­ed with pre­ci­sion.

"It's vi­tal the SoE doesn't pe­nalise the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty or in­fringe up­on the rights of the in­no­cent."

Call­ing for on­go­ing di­a­logue re­gard­ing any cur­few hours im­ple­ment­ed and to en­sure the move­ment of es­sen­tial goods and ser­vices is pre­served, Ma­haraj added, "The suc­cess of this in­ter­ven­tion must be mea­sured by a long- term re­duc­tion in crime that per­sists far be­yond ex­pi­ra­tion of these emer­gency pow­ers."

Call­ing on stake­hold­ers to work to­geth­er dur­ing this "dif­fi­cult" pe­ri­od, Ma­haraj said, "We hope this SoE serves as a de­fin­i­tive turn­ing point...."

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion head Gre­go­ry Aboud said, "Fail­ures in de­tec­tion and pros­e­cu­tion will re­quire us to live un­der a con­stant state of emer­gency. We com­plete­ly un­der­stand the need for our Gov­ern­ment to re­sort to the de­c­la­ra­tion of an­oth­er state of emer­gency. The rapid­ly in­creas­ing mur­der rate, es­pe­cial­ly for Feb­ru­ary, in­di­cates a wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion that needs ur­gent at­ten­tion to save lives.

"While we un­der­stand the SoE, we wish to state, as we have be­fore, that this is, in our opin­ion, a stop­gap mea­sure. What's re­al­ly need­ed is an en­vi­ron­ment of law and or­der in which crim­i­nals are dis­cour­aged from at­tempt­ing crimes. The great­est de­ter­rent known to crim­i­nal be­hav­iour is the fear of be­ing ap­pre­hend­ed.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, with a de­tec­tion rate of less than 10 per cent we've failed to send a mes­sage to crim­i­nals that their ac­tions aren't ac­cept­able. Know­ing they'll prob­a­bly nev­er be caught is a stim­u­lant to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty..." Aboud added, "The SoE, un­for­tu­nate­ly, cre­ates some stig­ma for our coun­try in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, where news of this ac­tion gives an in­di­ca­tion that we're un­able to con­trol our af­fairs with­out re­sort­ing to ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers.

"We hope the SoE will have an im­me­di­ate ef­fect of sav­ing lives and we'll be­gin look­ing at trans­form­ing the man­age­ment of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices to mea­sure/re­ward per­for­mance and send a mes­sage to crim­i­nals that they'll be caught and pros­e­cut­ed ..."

T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) pres­i­dent Dale Par­son said they sup­port­ed the move to re­in­state the SoE.

"We're hope­ful it will pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the econ­o­my by ad­dress­ing the es­ca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion since the pre­vi­ous SoE end­ed Jan­u­ary 31st. While recog­nis­ing the SoE as one key strat­e­gy—and not the on­ly one—to com­bat crime, the TTMA looks for­ward to com­ple­men­tary long-term mea­sures and in­ter­ven­tions, in­clud­ing ad­dress­ing ju­di­cial short­com­ings to fast-track crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings, and seek­ing for­eign in­tel­li­gence and as­sis­tance."

He added, "Cre­at­ing an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for in­vest­ments, trade, tourism and busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties re­quires curb­ing the re­cent resurge in crime. At the same time, any cur­tail­ment of lib­er­ties must align with con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions and long-term ef­fects. Al­though an SoE may tem­porar­i­ly im­pact tourism flows, it is the bet­ter of two 'evils,' of­fer­ing greater po­ten­tial to re­store safe­ty and at­tract fu­ture tourist ar­rivals."

Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said they were hop­ing for pos­i­tive re­sult from the lat­est SoE.

"We ex­pect au­thor­i­ties to fi­nal­ly root out the small num­ber of crim­i­nal el­e­ments con­tin­u­ing to hold T&T to ran­som. We ex­pect pos­i­tive ef­fects from this lat­est SoE We didn't see any neg­a­tive fall­out from the last SoE, so we see no rea­son for that with this one."

Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers chair­man Vivek Char­ran said he ex­pect­ed min­i­mal in­con­ve­nience.

"The ef­fects on busi­ness just af­ter Car­ni­val should be min­i­mal as there's no cur­few. It seems to be the same lev­el of SoE we've had be­fore. ..."