Alexander says security threat still exists as SoE nears end

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Five days be­fore the State of Emer­gency (SoE) is due to ex­pire, the Gov­ern­ment was still not say­ing whether it will seek an­oth­er ex­ten­sion, even as Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der main­tains that threats against Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials re­main.

Alexan­der was ques­tioned yes­ter­day about the se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion fol­low­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) for Star Sab­ga, Do­minic Hadeed and Genevieve Hadeed, who had been de­tained in con­nec­tion with an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

Asked whether threats against Gov­ern­ment mem­bers still ex­ist­ed as he en­tered the Red House for yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, Alexan­der replied, “There’s al­ways threats. Threats don’t go away just like that.”

How­ev­er, with the SoE sched­uled to end on Sep­tem­ber 17, he stopped short of say­ing whether those threats war­rant­ed an ex­ten­sion.

Rais­ing both wrists, each adorned with a watch, he re­spond­ed: “On­ly time will tell.”

Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John gave a sim­i­lar­ly guard­ed re­sponse when asked whether the SoE would be ex­tend­ed.

Speak­ing as she ar­rived for the cer­e­mo­ni­al re­open­ing of Par­lia­ment, John said, “How you know that? Why don’t we wait and see? Why are we so anx­ious? Wait and see. You have a good Gov­ern­ment.”

The Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion re­mained un­clear fol­low­ing com­ments from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who con­firmed that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, of which he is a mem­ber, met on Thurs­day but de­clined to dis­close what was dis­cussed.

“I sit on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and yes­ter­day, we did have a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing. I can con­firm that, but I can al­so con­firm that much more will be said in terms of what the de­lib­er­a­tions were and the sta­tis­tics. So you don’t have much longer to wait on that,” he said.

Padarath al­so said his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail would re­main in place, fol­low­ing threats against his life, un­less se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials ad­vised oth­er­wise.

Re­ject­ing any sug­ges­tion that min­is­ters had in­de­pen­dent­ly cho­sen to in­crease their se­cu­ri­ty, Padarath said such de­ci­sions were based en­tire­ly on threat as­sess­ments con­duct­ed by State agen­cies.

“We didn’t have to height­en se­cu­ri­ty. This is al­ways based on a threat as­sess­ment, and that threat as­sess­ment, if you look un­der the sched­ule of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, for­mer­ly the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, you will see there’s a line item that says safe­ty of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clu­sive of the Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter, etc. That is an as­sess­ment that is done by our state re­sources. You will see the Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cer be­hind me,” he said.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment must ac­count for the re­sults of the SoE as its ex­pi­ra­tion ap­proach­es. She al­so re­it­er­at­ed that the Op­po­si­tion would face sig­nif­i­cant dif­fi­cul­ty sup­port­ing an­oth­er ex­ten­sion.

“For the first State of Emer­gency, we gave the Gov­ern­ment the ben­e­fit of the doubt. But now you’ve had thou­sands of PDOs, and come Sep­tem­ber 17, when it ex­pires, hun­dreds of peo­ple are go­ing to be re­leased,” Beck­les said.

“It can­not be that you’re us­ing your ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers un­der the State of Emer­gency to sim­ply ar­rest peo­ple, keep them in cus­tody and then re­lease them. The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go have ab­solute­ly no trust in the Gov­ern­ment as it re­lates to the State of Emer­gency, and we are wait­ing pa­tient­ly to see whether, up­on its ex­pi­ra­tion, they are re­al­ly go­ing to ask us again to vote for it.”

She added that it would be dif­fi­cult to sup­port an­oth­er ex­ten­sion giv­en that the coun­try has spent much of the Gov­ern­ment’s first year in of­fice un­der emer­gency mea­sures.

Beck­les re­it­er­at­ed that if au­thor­i­ties had suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence link­ing de­tainees to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, they should be ar­rest­ed and charged. She al­so pre­dict­ed that all PDO de­tainees would be re­leased once the SoE ends.

Op­po­si­tion MP Bri­an Man­ning al­so op­posed ex­tend­ing the emer­gency mea­sures.

Speak­ing out­side the Red House, Man­ning said, “The Gov­ern­ment can­not con­tin­ue to run this coun­try via SoE. Es­sen­tial­ly, they are rob­bing peo­ple of this coun­try of their rights. An SoE is sup­posed to be a last re­sort. You can­not run a coun­try by last re­sort. There’s no pol­i­cy. There’s no di­rec­tion.”

He added that the Op­po­si­tion would con­tin­ue high­light­ing what it sees as the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ures.

Op­po­si­tion MP Chris­t­ian Birch­wood adopt­ed a more mea­sured stance.

“What I would like to see is the end of the vi­o­lence, and in terms of the ex­ten­sion, we would have to wait and see what the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to do and, as an Op­po­si­tion, we are pre­pared to deal with that when that time comes,” he said.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Mar­lene Attzs al­so de­clined to spec­u­late on whether the SoE should be ex­tend­ed but ques­tioned the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of main­tain­ing it while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly rolling out the 30 joint po­lice posts an­nounced by the Gov­ern­ment.

She not­ed that the SoE ap­peared to be one el­e­ment of the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy, with the joint se­cu­ri­ty posts rep­re­sent­ing an­oth­er, but ques­tioned whether enough per­son­nel ex­ist­ed to sus­tain both ini­tia­tives.

“Based on what the Gov­ern­ment has been say­ing, they are com­fort­ed that there has been some sort of de­cline in the crime rate. I don’t know if, as Cit­i­zen Jane, I feel the same way,” Attzs said.

She ar­gued that main­tain­ing both the SoE and the new se­cu­ri­ty posts could place com­pet­ing de­mands on al­ready stretched po­lice and mil­i­tary re­sources.

“It seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive to me to have both of them op­er­a­tionalised,” she said, sug­gest­ing that the Gov­ern­ment may in­stead choose a phased ap­proach by al­low­ing the SoE to lapse while giv­ing the joint posts an op­por­tu­ni­ty to prove their ef­fec­tive­ness in crime hotspots.

On Wednes­day, the Prime Min­is­ter told Guardian Me­dia that the 30 po­lice posts would be launched in the com­ing weeks.