AG warns threats to PM will not be tolerated as Parliament extends SoE

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie warned that threats against the Prime Min­is­ter, in­clud­ing those post­ed on­line, will be treat­ed se­ri­ous­ly un­der the law as Par­lia­ment vot­ed on Fri­day to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency for an­oth­er three months with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port.

“In some ter­ri­to­ries, you go to jail for that. In oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, you are shot for that,” the AG told the Low­er House, stand­ing by the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to de­tain in­di­vid­u­als for so­cial me­dia posts dur­ing the pre­vi­ous SoE.

Je­re­mie made the re­marks while wind­ing up the de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the emer­gency pow­ers reg­u­la­tions, de­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of threats against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and its broad­er crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy.

He point­ed to the No­vem­ber de­ten­tion of Olive Green-Jack dur­ing the pre­vi­ous SoE for com­ments made on Face­book. “This would have been not just a ba­nana re­pub­lic; we would have been a sil­ly coun­try if we did not take ac­tion on that. And I am proud to say that I had some­thing to do with tak­ing ac­tion on that. Be­cause that is be­hav­iour that is not per­mis­si­ble and that, as long as I have life in me, I will not per­mit.”

Je­re­mie al­so re­ject­ed crit­i­cism of the lat­est emer­gency mea­sures, re­veal­ing that the Cab­i­net note sent to the Pres­i­dent fol­lowed the same ap­proach used by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the AG, the doc­u­ment re­lied on the state of emer­gency Cab­i­net note is­sued by the for­mer gov­ern­ment in De­cem­ber 2024 as prece­dent.

He fur­ther ar­gued that ex­ist­ing gang leg­is­la­tion is not strong enough to deal with or­gan­ised crime.

“There are se­ri­ous prob­lems with the an­ti-gang law, and we have to fix it. There are de­f­i­n­i­tions which are cir­cu­lar, tau­tol­o­gous, and im­pos­si­ble to use. Gang, gang mem­ber, gang leader — all of those things are premised on one con­cept. And our ad­vice is that un­less those con­cepts are in­ter­twined — un­less you find a way to tar­get gang ac­tiv­i­ty with dif­fer­ent trig­gers — the act is a dead let­ter. It’s been used once or twice, nev­er suc­cess­ful­ly.”

Op­po­si­tion MPs, how­ev­er, ques­tioned whether the emer­gency pow­ers were jus­ti­fied, ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment had not pre­sent­ed the same lev­el of da­ta or sta­tis­tics used when the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tro­duced an SoE in 2024.

Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land said the Gov­ern­ment’s own state­ments sug­gest­ed crime had de­clined.

“If crime is down, the vibes were se­cured, it’s the safest Car­ni­val in the last 20 years. How are we here now?”

Scot­land al­so lament­ed that the coun­try had been un­der an SoE for 197 days, which he said rep­re­sents 61 per cent of the Gov­ern­ment’s 320 days in of­fice. He fur­ther ques­tioned whether the reg­u­la­tions could be used against cit­i­zens protest­ing over their griev­ances.

Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal re­ject­ed the crit­i­cism, warn­ing that fail­ing to con­front vi­o­lent crime could make the coun­try un­govern­able.

“If we do not watch it, and we don’t take ac­tion like this, Haiti could be our fu­ture. And we will not have that. We’ll not have it at all. We will not have a coun­try that is un­govern­able, un­con­trol­lable. We will not con­cede space to the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

He added that the Gov­ern­ment had not abused the emer­gency pow­ers in the past.

But Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert raised con­cerns about the scope of the reg­u­la­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­vi­sions re­lat­ed to pub­lic or­der.

“What this does is pro­hib­it any­body from say­ing any­thing which, in the opin­ion of a po­lice of­fi­cer — an un­trained po­lice of­fi­cer, who has no guid­ance, has no in­for­ma­tion — sounds like it is en­dan­ger­ing pub­lic safe­ty. Or that post you put on Face­book, or that ar­ti­cle you write, looks like it en­dan­gers pub­lic safe­ty. And this is why I say I am cer­tain that this reg­u­la­tion would be deemed dis­pro­por­tion­ate, and the out­come will be the same.”

Im­bert added that a de­cline in mur­ders was not a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for con­tin­u­ing emer­gency pow­ers.

De­spite the ob­jec­tions, Par­lia­ment ap­proved the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency with 26 votes in favour and 12 against.

Dur­ing his wind-up of the de­bate, Je­re­mie ac­knowl­edged that he has a per­son­al griev­ance with for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ac­cus­ing him of speak­ing about him pub­licly while he re­mained silent.

He claimed Row­ley had boast­ed about giv­ing peo­ple strokes and “car­ry­ing peo­ple to Les Coteaux.”

“I stick to the Hansard, and I stand by the state­ments which he made in the Hansard, which re­vealed that he took crime flip­pant­ly. And he has car­ried that par­ty (PNM) down a dan­ger­ous slope to the point to­day... I have nev­er seen it in the state it is in now. And I want to tell you all some­thing — that par­ty there is in dan­ger of com­plete and ut­ter de­struc­tion.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Row­ley for com­ment, but he did not re­spond up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.