Beckles: ZOSO return shows Govt has no real crime plan

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has slammed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to bring the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill back to Par­lia­ment, ar­gu­ing that its re­vival as the State of Emer­gency (SoE) comes to an end next week shows the Gov­ern­ment has no ef­fec­tive al­ter­na­tive strat­e­gy to tack­le crime.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der’s an­nounce­ment in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les de­scribed the leg­is­la­tion as a “failed and com­pro­mised” bill.

“The an­nounce­ment mo­ments ago to bring the failed and com­pro­mised ZOSO Bill back to Par­lia­ment rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about whether this Gov­ern­ment has any re­al in­ter­est in ad­dress­ing crime in this coun­try,” Beck­les said.

She ar­gued that af­ter months of ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers un­der the SoE, the Gov­ern­ment was now seek­ing to re­place those mea­sures with leg­is­la­tion that had al­ready failed to se­cure the re­quired sup­port in Par­lia­ment.

Beck­les al­so crit­i­cised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for not be­ing present in Par­lia­ment for yes­ter­day’s sit­ting, ac­cus­ing her of avoid­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty over the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the SoE.

“In­stead, she sent Roger Alexan­der to read a state­ment an­nounc­ing the rein­tro­duc­tion of ZOSO,” Beck­les said.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so re­newed ques­tions sur­round­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pre­vi­ous claim that two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors had sought bribes in con­nec­tion with the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion.

“Will the Prime Min­is­ter fi­nal­ly re­veal the names of the two In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors whom she claimed want­ed bribes to sup­port the bill?” Beck­les asked.

The ZOSO Bill failed in the Sen­ate in Jan­u­ary, af­ter the Gov­ern­ment was un­able to se­cure the three-fifths spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty re­quired for its pas­sage.

Beck­les main­tained that the leg­is­la­tion was not in the coun­try’s best in­ter­est, ar­gu­ing that it would cre­ate a “per­ma­nent ex­pan­sion of un­con­sti­tu­tion­al state pow­er” and give the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate sig­nif­i­cant pow­ers over com­mu­ni­ties se­lect­ed for spe­cial op­er­a­tions.

She ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to re­place tem­po­rary emer­gency mea­sures with sweep­ing pow­ers that could be used against com­mu­ni­ties deemed po­lit­i­cal­ly un­favourable.