Panday criticises Govt’s reliance on SoE to fight crime

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day is again crit­i­cis­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to crime, ar­gu­ing that re­peat­ed States of Emer­gency do not amount to a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty plan.

In a me­dia state­ment, Pan­day said that crime was a cen­tral is­sue in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, dur­ing which time the pop­u­la­tion was promised a com­pre­hen­sive an­ti-crime strat­e­gy. She ar­gued that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, has had suf­fi­cient time across mul­ti­ple terms in and out of of­fice to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment a clear plan.

She point­ed out that the Gov­ern­ment pre­vi­ous­ly held of­fice from 2010 to 2015, spent near­ly a decade in Op­po­si­tion, and has now re­turned to pow­er for a year, giv­ing it what she de­scribed as al­most 16 years to study the crime sit­u­a­tion, con­sult ex­perts and de­liv­er so­lu­tions.

Pan­day said un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, var­i­ous mea­sures were in­tro­duced, in­clud­ing States of Emer­gency, joint pa­trols, task forces, promis­es of new tech­nol­o­gy and tougher leg­is­la­tion. De­spite those ef­forts, she said the coun­try end­ed 2024 with record lev­els of vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing mass killings and an un­prece­dent­ed num­ber of mur­ders in To­ba­go.

She ar­gued that the cur­rent UNC Gov­ern­ment is now re­ly­ing on sim­i­lar emer­gency mea­sures, de­scrib­ing it as a con­tin­u­a­tion rather than a change in pol­i­cy.

“A State of Emer­gency may give the State ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers for a lim­it­ed time. It may al­low the Gov­ern­ment to claim ac­tion is be­ing tak­en. But it is not, by it­self, a crime plan,” Pan­day said.

She out­lined sev­er­al ar­eas she be­lieves re­quire clear pol­i­cy di­rec­tion, in­clud­ing stop­ping the flow of il­le­gal firearms in­to the coun­try, dis­man­tling crim­i­nal gangs, strength­en­ing in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing, im­prov­ing wit­ness pro­tec­tion and in­creas­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of the court sys­tem.

Pan­day al­so called for de­fined time­lines, mea­sur­able tar­gets and spe­cif­ic in­ter­ven­tions for at-risk youth to pre­vent re­cruit­ment in­to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Cit­i­zens are not un­rea­son­able. They un­der­stand that crime can­not dis­ap­pear overnight. But they al­so know the dif­fer­ence be­tween a se­ri­ous strat­e­gy and a re­cy­cled re­sponse,” Pan­day said.

Pan­day main­tained that the Gov­ern­ment can­not cam­paign on crime and then re­ly on re­peat­ed States of Emer­gency as its pri­ma­ry re­sponse, adding that there re­mains no clear, trans­par­ent and mea­sur­able an­ti-crime plan.

She said the elec­torate vot­ed for change and re­sults, warn­ing that con­tin­ued re­liance on emer­gency pow­ers sig­nals that lit­tle has shift­ed in the na­tion­al ap­proach to crime.

T&T has now been un­der four SoEs be­tween the coun­try’s last two ad­min­is­tra­tions. The for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment had im­ple­ment­ed an SoE on De­cem­ber 30, 2024, fol­low­ing a surge in vi­o­lent crime. That SoE was ex­tend­ed and ran to April 13, 2025.

Three months af­ter tak­ing of­fice in April 2025, the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion an­nounced an SoE in Ju­ly. That SoE was ex­tend­ed to Jan­u­ary 2026. The UNC called its lat­est SoE in March.

SoEs called by UNC Gov­ern­ments

Au­gust 2011 to De­cem­ber 2011

Ju­ly 2025 to Jan­u­ary 2026

March 2026-present