“A waste of $60,000 a month”; PNM deputy leader slams Alexander’s ZOSO remarks

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hu has con­demned Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der for sug­gest­ing that the two year old child killed this morn­ing in Bel­mont would still be alive had the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion been in force.

Bood­hu slammed Alexan­der’s com­ments as “di­vi­sive, in­ept, racist and dis­re­spect­ful,” ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor of ex­ploit­ing a na­tion­al tragedy to score po­lit­i­cal points and de­fend the con­tro­ver­sial leg­is­la­tion which was de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate ear­li­er this year.

The crit­i­cism came af­ter Alexan­der is­sued a fiery state­ment fol­low­ing the killings in Bel­mont, blam­ing what he called “bad pol­i­tics” in PNM-held com­mu­ni­ties for the vi­o­lence.

“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,” Alexan­der wrote.

Alexan­der ar­gued that Bel­mont re­flect­ed what hap­pens when com­mu­ni­ties are over­tak­en by gangs, drugs and un­der­de­vel­op­ment, claim­ing that a ZOSO would have trans­formed the area and re­duced crim­i­nal in­flu­ence.

“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,” he stat­ed.

The ZOSO leg­is­la­tion sought to em­pow­er the Prime Min­is­ter to des­ig­nate high crime ar­eas for in­ten­sive joint mil­i­tary po­lice cor­dons.

The bill was ul­ti­mate­ly de­feat­ed due to a fail­ure to se­cure the re­quired spe­cial par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty, as the op­po­si­tion and in­de­pen­dents raised sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns re­gard­ing po­ten­tial hu­man rights in­fringe­ments and the broad dis­cre­tionary pow­ers grant­ed to the ex­ec­u­tive.

Mean­while Alexan­der al­so crit­i­cised the in­de­pen­dent bench in the Sen­ate for re­ject­ing the leg­is­la­tion, say­ing they “had a chance to help fix this and went the oth­er way.”

But Bood­hu ac­cused Alexan­der of mak­ing reck­less and in­flam­ma­to­ry re­marks while ig­nor­ing that the coun­try is al­ready un­der emer­gency se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

“The en­tire coun­try is un­der a State of Emer­gency, in­clud­ing Bel­mont,” Bood­hu said in a state­ment.

He point­ed to re­cent state­ments from De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge that the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force had al­ready moved to an “el­e­vat­ed op­er­a­tional pos­ture” to sup­port the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Bood­hu al­so ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment al­ready pos­sess­es the au­thor­i­ty and state re­sources Alexan­der claimed would on­ly come through a ZOSO.

“The Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment was sworn in on 03 May 2025, some 12 months ago and since then, her re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in­cludes pro­vid­ing sup­port for the peo­ple of Bel­mont, just like every oth­er part of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Bood­hu ques­tioned whether Alexan­der’s com­ments amount­ed to an ad­mis­sion that the SoE had failed to im­prove pub­lic safe­ty de­spite the sus­pen­sion of cer­tain con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“I would ask whether his rant this morn­ing is an ad­mis­sion that the SOE is noth­ing but a naked sus­pen­sion of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, and has no strat­e­gy, plan­ning, De­fence Force sup­port, and is not in­tend­ed to be used at all, to en­hance the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens,” Bood­hu said.

He fur­ther sug­gest­ed that if the SoE was in­ef­fec­tive, it raised con­cerns about whether the mea­sure was in­stead be­ing used “to threat­en or achieve the sup­pres­sion of dis­sent­ing or protes­tant voic­es.”

Bood­hu end­ed his state­ment by dis­miss­ing Alexan­der as “an em­bar­rass­ment to our coun­try,” adding, “What a waste of the cit­i­zens’ mon­ey on a $60,000 a month salary.”