Political clash erupts over Belmont triple murder

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The Op­po­si­tion has re­ject­ed claims that Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion could have pre­vent­ed the Bel­mont triple mur­der that left a tod­dler dead, even as the Gov­ern­ment de­fends the ef­fec­tive­ness of the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SOE) and con­tin­ues to pro­mote ZOSO as part of its wider crime strat­e­gy.

The po­lit­i­cal clash comes in the af­ter­math of Thurs­day’s shoot­ing in Bel­mont that claimed the lives of 23-month-old Aki­ni Kafi, his 30-year-old fa­ther Aquil Kafi and fam­i­ly friend An­tho­ny Wil­son, 28. The child’s moth­er, 36-year-old An­to­nia Cain-Kafi, re­mains hos­pi­talised in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

The in­ci­dent, which was yes­ter­day linked to a quadru­ple mur­der along the La­dy Young Road, Mor­vant, last month by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, has since in­ten­si­fied scruti­ny of the Gov­ern­ment’s crime strat­e­gy.

Po­lice sta­tis­tics show a slight de­cline in killings un­der the SoE, with 130 mur­ders record­ed so far this year com­pared to 136 over the same pe­ri­od last year. But that mar­gin­al re­duc­tion is be­ing over­shad­owed by a re­cent surge in high-pro­file vi­o­lent at­tacks. Based on da­ta sent last evening, there have been 10 mur­ders so far this month com­pared to five for the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od last year.

Still, the Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day main­tained that the emer­gency mea­sures are de­liv­er­ing re­sults.

“Of course, the State of Emer­gency is work­ing. The amount of mur­ders have de­creased. I know there are in­stances re­cent­ly, es­pe­cial­ly yes­ter­day (Thurs­day), but it doesn’t mean that the state of emer­gency is not work­ing,” Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj said on his way to yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, when asked about whether Gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing cur­few as he ar­rived out­side Par­lia­ment, dis­missed the idea of ad­di­tion­al re­stric­tions.

“No, no. The peo­ple of Laven­tille didn’t want any ZOSO through their min­is­ter (MP), not so?” he quipped.

But At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie of­fered no pub­lic de­fence of the SoE when ques­tioned about whether ad­di­tion­al mea­sures such as a cur­few were be­ing con­sid­ered, or whether he be­lieves the SoE is ef­fec­tive.

As pres­sure mounts, how­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion has de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach as a fail­ure.

“This State of Emer­gency is a waste of time. It is an egre­gious tres­pass on the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go. It has had ab­solute­ly no ef­fect and the Prime Min­is­ter should im­me­di­ate­ly bring an end to this SoE cha­rade be­cause it is not work­ing,” Op­po­si­tion chief whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les said out­side the House.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Stu­art Young al­so weighed in, say­ing the SoE has failed de­spite be­ing the strongest le­gal tool avail­able to the State.

“We are in a State of Emer­gency. Un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, there is noth­ing worse that can be done to sus­pend our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights than a state of emer­gency. So, if we’re liv­ing un­der a state of emer­gency, and it’s not work­ing, and we’re see­ing these sort of mass shoot­ings, and you look at the num­ber of shells af­ter­wards—over 30. Some­thing is se­ri­ous­ly wrong. And it’s not about car­ry­ing on the way we are,” said Young.

While de­bate over the SoE con­tin­ues, at­ten­tion has again shift­ed to ZOSOs, with one Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter fac­ing crit­i­cism over claims it could have pre­vent­ed the Bel­mont killings.

Min­is­ter in the Hous­ing Min­istry Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der has been at the cen­tre of con­tro­ver­sy, af­ter sug­gest­ing on so­cial me­dia that a ZOSO pres­ence in Bel­mont could have saved the child.

Alexan­der took to Face­book on Thurs­day to share, “That two-year-old would be alive right now if Bel­mont was un­der a ZOSO and in the con­trol of law en­force­ment and the army with So­cial De­vel­op­ment rein­vent­ing lives to pros­per­i­ty and peace.”

He al­so wrote: “Gun­men, gangs and gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, drug em­pires us­ing aban­doned hu­man cap­i­tal as their hu­man re­source, the PNM can­cer in Bel­mont has metas­ta­sised to the bone.

“A ZOSO in Bel­mont would have trans­formed that com­mu­ni­ty back to func­tion­al but would have robbed the drug lords fi­nanc­ing the PNM of their cheap ex­pend­able labour.”

De­fend­ing his com­ments yes­ter­day out­side the Par­lia­ment, Alexan­der said the coun­try as a whole must ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the vi­o­lence.

“We failed that lit­tle two-year-old child, you know. We as a na­tion failed. But we can’t con­tin­ue to push this un­der the rug and pre­tend that it is okay to say, ‘don’t politi­cise crime’.

“Every sin­gle elec­tion that has been fought in the last 20 years were fought on crime. We can’t es­cape the fact that crime is the num­ber one is­sue af­fect­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Alexan­der said.

But Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle strong­ly re­ject­ed the ar­gu­ment.

“He’s (Phillip Alexan­der) so dunce that he does not even un­der­stand what is in the bill. Cause clear­ly, any­one who un­der­stands what was in the pro­posed ZOSO would tell you that the State of Emer­gency gives much more ex­pan­sive pow­ers to the State.”

Mar­celle al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to pub­licly dis­tance it­self from the re­marks.

“It is very un­for­tu­nate that if it is, in fact, not the view of the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and her Gov­ern­ment, that they have not dis­tanced them­selves from these very un­for­tu­nate, dis­gust­ing and in­sen­si­tive re­marks made.”

Mean­while, Young al­so pushed back on the ZOSO ar­gu­ment, say­ing its pow­ers are, in fact, more lim­it­ed than an SoE, mak­ing the com­par­i­son flawed. He sug­gest­ed that if amend­ments are be­ing con­sid­ered, a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee should be es­tab­lished to al­low struc­tured dis­cus­sion be­tween Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent voic­es.

Young al­so ques­tioned why pre­vi­ous­ly dis­man­tled youth de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes could not be re­stored im­me­di­ate­ly to sup­port vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties, ar­gu­ing that such in­ter­ven­tions should op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly of emer­gency leg­is­la­tion.

He fur­ther called for ac­count­abil­i­ty at the high­est lev­el, in­sist­ing that the Min­is­ters of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and De­fence should re­sign, and warned that con­tin­ued re­liance on emer­gency pow­ers with­out re­sults shows that “some­thing is se­ri­ous­ly wrong.”

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith al­so took to so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day to chal­lenge the Gov­ern­ment on its be­lief that ZOSOs were more pow­er­ful than an SoE.

In a re­sponse, Grif­fith said, “To state that dur­ing a State of Emer­gency, if ZOSO was ap­proved, that it could have pre­vent­ed re­cent mur­ders, is as ridicu­lous a state­ment as you can get. A ZOSO is a vir­tu­al sub­set of a State of Emer­gency (SoE). It pro­vides the same ex­tra law en­force­ment pow­ers and re­moval of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, that you get in a SoE, but on­ly in spe­cif­ic ar­eas.

“In oth­er words, a SoE al­lows for a na­tion­wide ZOSO. If you have a State of Emer­gency, then there is noth­ing stop­ping you from tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic ar­eas to es­tab­lish Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions. In­stead of fin­ger-point­ing and play­ing the blame game, just fo­cus on the mis­sion please.”