Moonilal: Data tells us UNC on right path with SoE extension

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has called on the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment to sup­port the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), as the da­ta has showed “we’re on the right path.”

He dis­missed the view that Gov­ern­ment is hid­ing from the pub­lic.

“We had a func­tion with 10,000 peo­ple. We can walk any­where, any place, any con­stituen­cy. I’m some­times tired turn­ing down in­vi­ta­tions to go all over the place. Peo­ple em­brace us and say they’re hap­py to see us and that we’re do­ing a won­der­ful job,” Mooni­lal said last night dur­ing de­bate on a mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE

“We walk through the malls all the time, Sun­days I go for dou­bles - we go all over.”

Mooni­lal, who said Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is the most peo­ple-friend­ly CoP, de­tailed sta­tis­tics show­ing crime drop­ping by 40 per cent. Mooni­lal said if Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar hadn’t tak­en the step she had, T&T would have been run by crim­i­nals.

He said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' an­ti-crime plans in­clud­ed so­cial sec­tor ini­tia­tives, work­ing with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and strength­en­ing an­ti-gang laws in a mul­ti-faceted ap­proach.

He said sup­port­ers do say they’d like to see greater po­lice pres­ence but they un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing and the UNC lis­tened to peo­ple. He said the SoE ex­ten­sion is a step in the right di­rec­tion.

Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young says peo­ple every­where are talk­ing about the sit­u­a­tion and the pop­u­la­tion is reach­ing boil­ing point, youths are frus­trat­ed, an­gry and ask­ing ques­tions that aren't be­ing an­swered, in­clud­ing why their rights were sup­pressed by the UNC.

Speak­ing af­ter Mooni­lal, Young not­ed that even UNC's Jack Warn­er has spo­ken against SoE ex­ten­sion - and ref­er­enced the 1990 coup at­tempt.

Young al­so point­ed out that Gov­ern­ment has fired 40,000 vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, and while the Gov­ern­ment was laugh­ing in its Par­lia­ment seats, cit­i­zens aren't. He said the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tri­bu­tions showed that they are com­plete­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the re­al­i­ties of how peo­ple are feel­ing.

Af­ter the AG's claims, Young asked if the Gov­ern­ment felt the "one per cent was go­ing to pull off a coup."

He not­ed that out of the UNC’s 14 months in of­fice, nine months have been spent un­der SoEs - and nei­ther the AG nor Mooni­lal gave any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the SoE ex­ten­sion and the AG gave none for the last SoE ei­ther. He said the UNC is us­ing the El Sal­vador mod­el, where an SoE has been in place since 2022

Young said there has been a fail­ure of the Con­sti­tu­tion, as this states the sit­u­a­tions where a gov­ern­ment should pur­sue an SoE - war with a for­eign state, earth­quake/hur­ri­cane/flood, in­fec­tious dis­eases or threat­ened ac­tion to en­dan­ger pub­lic safe­ty - but there has been no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of any of these sit­u­a­tions to war­rant an SoE.

He said al­though par­ties are be­ing al­lowed to have gath­er­ings, the type of con­di­tions - who is speak­ing, how at­ten­dees will be there - are as­tound­ing. But he said while free­dom of ex­pres­sion is cur­tailed by Gov­ern­ment, one of the most fre­quent so­cial me­dia users is Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kadi­jah Ameen.

"I guess she's lucky that the pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment un­der an SoE didn't de­cide to ex­er­cise a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der," Young added.