Sando East MP accuses Govt of ‘Nazification’ of T&T

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

As Trinidad and To­ba­go marked 50 years as a re­pub­lic on Thurs­day, with scouts, cadets, brown­ies and girl guides parad­ing through San Fer­nan­do, the mile­stone was quick­ly over­shad­owed by po­lit­i­cal fall­out from a marathon overnight sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, with San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of pre­sid­ing over the “Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The par­lia­men­tary de­bate end­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly just af­ter mid­night when the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, 2026, passed in the Sen­ate af­ter Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark cast the de­cid­ing vote to break a 15-15 dead­lock. Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors backed the leg­is­la­tion unan­i­mous­ly, while it re­ceived no sup­port from Op­po­si­tion or In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the Re­pub­lic Day pa­rade, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris said the de­vel­op­ments in the Sen­ate were trou­bling.

“I saw last night in the Sen­ate some­thing quite un­prece­dent­ed in terms of the de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try,” Par­ris said.

“Cer­tain­ly at 50 years, we are old enough to de­ter­mine our own des­tiny, and I re­al­ly re­flect and hope that the lead­ers of our coun­try re­alise that the de­ci­sions that they make to­day are to im­pact all of us as the cit­i­zen­ry of the Re­pub­lic of T&T.”

The bill cleared the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Sep­tem­ber 19 af­ter more than 13 hours of de­bate be­fore mov­ing to the Sen­ate, where it faced a knife-edge vote.

The leg­is­la­tion es­tab­lish­es sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts and al­lows des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tions to be de­clared “closed ar­eas,” en­abling au­thor­i­ties to im­pose cur­fews, check­points, cor­dons and trav­el re­stric­tions. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has de­fend­ed the mea­sure as a tem­po­rary crime-fight­ing tool, cit­ing a two-year sun­set clause and ju­di­cial over­sight as safe­guards.

A sim­i­lar Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) bill was de­feat­ed in Jan­u­ary af­ter fail­ing to se­cure the re­quired three-fifths spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty. The Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly re­moved that vot­ing thresh­old, al­low­ing the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion to pass by a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty.

Par­ris de­clined to com­ment on re­ports that the spe­cial op­er­a­tions pow­ers could be ap­plied on­ly in Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-held con­stituen­cies. He said his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as may­or was to serve all res­i­dents.

“I rep­re­sent every San Fer­nan­di­an, UNC or PNM,” he said, adding that any po­si­tion he takes is in the in­ter­est of “a unit­ed T&T.”

Man­ning, how­ev­er, was far more crit­i­cal.

“Yes, it’s un­for­tu­nate, be­cause I think what we are see­ing right now is re­al­ly the naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, where you are go­ing to have peo­ple who have to get per­mis­sion to go from one part of the coun­try to the next. In our view, that is not crime-fight­ing,” he said.

Man­ning al­so crit­i­cised the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, which was passed in the House un­der a sim­ple-ma­jor­i­ty thresh­old on Wednes­day and now goes be­fore the Sen­ate to­mor­row.

The leg­is­la­tion pro­pos­es ex­pand­ing cat­e­gories of state ex­pen­di­ture ex­empt from stan­dard pro­cure­ment rules, in­clud­ing en­er­gy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty projects; in­creas­ing the ceil­ing for sim­pli­fied pro­cure­ment; re­duc­ing wait­ing pe­ri­ods be­fore con­tracts can pro­ceed; and lim­it­ing the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion’s au­thor­i­ty once in­ves­ti­ga­tions are com­plet­ed.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has de­fend­ed the amend­ments as nec­es­sary to re­duce de­lays and ac­cel­er­ate pub­lic-sec­tor projects, point­ing to bot­tle­necks that have af­fect­ed ini­tia­tives such as the Paria re­fin­ery restart.

Man­ning was un­spar­ing in his crit­i­cism.

“We have shift­ed the OPR from what it was, now in­to ba­si­cal­ly a flash­light po­lice of­fi­cer, where they have no teeth to do any­thing pos­si­ble,” he said.

He added: “I have said from the be­gin­ning the UNC has been de­signed and struc­tured for cor­rup­tion.”

Par­ris adopt­ed a more mea­sured stance, say­ing he would wel­come the re­turn of a “CEO’s award” mech­a­nism that would al­low lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies to ap­prove emer­gency con­tracts with­out Cab­i­net ap­proval. He cit­ed long-de­layed re­pairs to Leon­son Lewis Park in Mon Re­pos as an ex­am­ple of projects that could ben­e­fit from faster pro­cure­ment.

Man­ning al­so at­tacked the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of a wage set­tle­ment with pub­lic ser­vants, claim­ing the promised ten per cent back­pay pack­age had ef­fec­tive­ly been re­duced to “four per cent cash, six per cent hot air.”

He al­leged that part of the out­stand­ing pay­ment could be is­sued through food cards and ar­gued that Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas had been left “hold­ing the bag” on a promise the gov­ern­ment nev­er in­tend­ed to ful­ly ho­n­our.

Man­ning fur­ther con­tend­ed that PSA mem­bers were un­like­ly to be sat­is­fied with the out­come af­ter their lead­er­ship pub­licly sup­port­ed the UNC dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign.

“I know mem­ber­ship can­not be hap­py that their pres­i­dent, or their leader, got on­to a UNC plat­form and sup­port­ed this gov­ern­ment in­to of­fice based on cer­tain promis­es, and now none of those promis­es have been de­liv­ered,” he said.