Hinds wants Kangaloo to withhold assent on Special Operations Bill

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds is call­ing on the Op­po­si­tion PNM to mo­bilise thou­sands of sup­port­ers and pe­ti­tion Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo not to as­sent to the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, ar­gu­ing that the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing its pas­sage in the Sen­ate war­rant her in­ter­ven­tion.

Hinds made the call on Sun­day evening while speak­ing at Arou­ca/Lopinot MP and PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence, where he ar­gued that the leg­is­la­tion failed to se­cure the sup­port of any sen­a­tor out­side the Gov­ern­ment bench.

The Bill re­ceived the sup­port of all 15 Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tors, while all six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors and nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors vot­ed against it. With the cham­ber tied 15-15, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Wade Mark ex­er­cised his cast­ing vote in favour of the leg­is­la­tion, al­low­ing it to pass 16-15.

Hinds said the PNM should now mount a pub­lic cam­paign sim­i­lar to its mo­bil­i­sa­tion against the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 leg­is­la­tion more than a decade ago.

“I think that the PNM needs to mo­bilise 10, 15,000 peo­ple like we did for Clause 34,” Hinds said.

He sug­gest­ed the par­ty pre­pare a let­ter and de­liv­er it to Pres­i­dent’s House, ask­ing Kan­ga­loo to con­sid­er with­hold­ing as­sent from the leg­is­la­tion.

“As far as I am con­cerned, with­out the sup­port of one In­de­pen­dent, the Gov­ern­ment lost the vote in the Sen­ate,” Hinds said.

“That’s my view. And the Pres­i­dent needs to be told so and to ask her to con­sid­er not as­sent­ing to that Bill in the pub­lic in­ter­est.”

Once a Bill has been passed by both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment, it is pre­sent­ed to the Pres­i­dent for as­sent be­fore be­com­ing an Act of Par­lia­ment.

But Hinds al­so turned his at­ten­tion in­ward, warn­ing PNM mem­bers that the par­ty could not af­ford to be dis­tract­ed by per­son­al griev­ances and in­ter­nal dis­putes at a time when, in his view, it need­ed to present a unit­ed front against the Gov­ern­ment.

His ap­peal comes as the PNM has re­cent­ly faced signs of in­ter­nal strain, in­clud­ing a pub­lic dis­agree­ment in­volv­ing San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning and mem­bers of his con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive. Both Man­ning and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les have re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the dis­pute amounts to a frac­ture with­in the par­ty, de­scrib­ing it in­stead as a dis­agree­ment over in­ter­nal process­es.

Hinds sug­gest­ed, how­ev­er, that some mem­bers were fo­cused on the wrong is­sues and urged them to put aside mat­ters con­cern­ing them­selves and oth­er dis­putes that could weak­en the par­ty.

“When we serve in the PNM, we serve in good­ness and in truth,” Hinds said.

“And there­fore, we are called up­on to set aside mat­ters per­tain­ing to us and all of the oth­er tri­fling is­sues that are caus­ing peo­ple to say we are not at our best.”

He said the par­ty need­ed to recog­nise the larg­er po­lit­i­cal fight be­fore it and work col­lec­tive­ly.

“We have a bat­tle ahead of us, and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are at risk,” Hinds said.

Hinds then turned his crit­i­cism back to the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cus­ing it of pur­su­ing poli­cies and en­gag­ing in con­duct that he be­lieves are di­vid­ing the coun­try.

“The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment is a dan­ger to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“They are di­vid­ing the peo­ple. She is threat­en­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of this coun­try by her poli­cies, by her con­duct, by her be­hav­iour.”

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill es­tab­lish­es a new frame­work for spe­cial po­lice op­er­a­tions across sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts and al­lows for the de­c­la­ra­tion of “closed ar­eas” where ad­di­tion­al polic­ing pow­ers and re­stric­tions can be im­posed.