SOE extended to September after midnight vote

The State of Emer­gency (SoE) has been ex­tend­ed un­til Sep­tem­ber af­ter the Gov­ern­ment se­cured a ma­jor­i­ty vote in Par­lia­ment short­ly af­ter mid­night on Thurs­day.

The mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE was passed at 12.27 am with 26 UNC MPs and the two TPP MPs vot­ing in favour. Twelve Op­po­si­tion PNM MPs present vot­ed against it.

Pi­lot­ing the mo­tion, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie point­ed to re­duced mur­der rates and ar­gued the mea­sure was pro­duc­ing re­sults.

“Giv­en the gains we have got­ten with the SOE,” Je­re­mie said, the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing an ex­ten­sion.

Wind­ing up the de­bate, he added, “We were head­ed to a very dark place, but Haiti will not be cit­i­zens’ fate un­der this UNC Gov­ern­ment.”

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said the Op­po­si­tion could not sup­port what she de­scribed as the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of a State of Emer­gency and did not see it as a sub­sti­tute for gov­er­nance.

She ar­gued the Gov­ern­ment had not pro­vid­ed suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion or ev­i­dence to con­vince the Op­po­si­tion an SoE would ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress crime.

Beck­les called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­veal its broad­er an­ti-crime strat­e­gy.

She al­so crit­i­cised some of Je­re­mie’s re­marks dur­ing the de­bate.

Beck­les said she was shocked by some of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s state­ments and sug­gest­ed he ap­peared to have is­sues with cer­tain peo­ple out­side Par­lia­ment.

She ques­tioned whether he would make the same com­ments out­side the pro­tec­tion of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

Re­spond­ing to Je­re­mie’s ref­er­ence to “grub­by PNM hands”, Beck­les said: “Take it to the po­lice! And don’t on­ly come and use Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to make ac­cu­sa­tions against us. If you have ev­i­dence against me, take it to the po­lice! If any one of us is named in that Spe­cial Re­port (the AG re­ferred to), make it pub­lic.”

She al­so chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment MPs di­rect­ly.

“MP for San Juan/Barataria – if you know I’m a ‘will­ing pawn’ for the One Per­cent, you pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion! All yuh ob­sessed with the One Per­cent! I can’t un­der­stand why all you so in love with the One Per­cent,” she said.

Beck­les warned the Gov­ern­ment: “If it feels I will re­main in Op­po­si­tion… pre­pare your­selves!”

She ac­cused the ad­min­is­tra­tion of lack­ing a co­her­ent an­ti-crime plan and said many cit­i­zens did not feel safer un­der the SoE.

“These SOEs are all about abuse of pow­er and fright­en­ing the peo­ple in­to sub­mis­sion – what is this Gov­ern­ment so afraid of??” she asked.

Re­fer­ring to in­di­ca­tions the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to re­vive Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZoSOs), Beck­les said she hoped there would be con­sul­ta­tion and again called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to iden­ti­fy the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors whom she had pre­vi­ous­ly claimed sought “favours” in ex­change for sup­port.

Beck­les said the Op­po­si­tion had re­peat­ed­ly in­di­cat­ed a will­ing­ness to work with the Gov­ern­ment but had not heard a sim­i­lar com­mit­ment from the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Je­re­mie re­spond­ed by say­ing he was not afraid of any­body.

“I am ter­ri­fied of the Prime Min­is­ter,” he said jok­ing­ly, while adding he had re­spect for Beck­les.

How­ev­er, he said he was dis­ap­point­ed she in­ter­pret­ed his ear­li­er re­marks as threats re­gard­ing peo­ple’s visas.

He al­so main­tained there could not be one rule for peo­ple who “like to put mon­ey in brown pa­per bags and give to oth­ers” and said he could re­peat those com­ments out­side Par­lia­ment.

Je­re­mie said the Gov­ern­ment had made sig­nif­i­cant progress in dis­rupt­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty un­der the first SoE of 2025 and ar­gued the sec­ond SoE, de­clared in March fol­low­ing es­ca­lat­ing gang vi­o­lence, had con­tin­ued those gains.

He said the UNC Gov­ern­ment was de­ter­mined mur­ders such as those of Calvin Lee and pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor would not oc­cur un­der its watch.

The cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s first SoE was de­clared in Ju­ly 2025 fol­low­ing in­tel­li­gence con­cern­ing a prison-based plot tar­get­ing mem­bers of the State, ju­di­cia­ry and pro­tec­tive ser­vices. That emer­gency was lat­er ex­tend­ed un­til Jan­u­ary 31, 2026.

The cur­rent SoE be­gan on March 3 and, fol­low­ing Par­lia­ment’s ap­proval, will now re­main in ef­fect un­til Sep­tem­ber.