Former PM welcomes Senate vote blocking ZOSOs Bill

JESSE RAMDEO

Se­nior Re­porter

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has wel­comed the vote by in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors that de­feat­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs), say­ing the out­come demon­strat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards are work­ing as in­tend­ed.

In a state­ment is­sued fol­low­ing the Sen­ate de­bate on Tues­day, Dr Row­ley said the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors “stepped in and, in the face of threats and in­sults, pro­tect­ed this coun­try’s sta­bil­i­ty and fu­ture” by re­ject­ing what he de­scribed as “an ill-con­ceived ap­proach to crime fight­ing”.

He con­tend­ed that the pro­posed mea­sure—which he char­ac­terised as a sup­posed “crime-fight­ing panacea”—had the po­ten­tial to cre­ate hav­oc in what he de­scribed as a volatile so­ci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly if it re­sult­ed in the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of polic­ing.

Dr Row­ley was al­so crit­i­cal of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­cus­ing her of in­com­pe­tence and de­scrib­ing her lead­er­ship as ab­sent, claim­ing that gov­er­nance was be­ing con­duct­ed via so­cial me­dia rather than through sober pol­i­cy-mak­ing.

He al­so re­ject­ed claims that op­po­si­tion to the ZOSO amount­ed to sup­port for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, de­scrib­ing such ac­cu­sa­tions as “a hol­low re­sponse to the shame of her de­feat.”

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Row­ley, the Prime Min­is­ter was in no po­si­tion to lec­ture oth­ers on re­spect for the law, al­leg­ing that in­di­vid­u­als with crim­i­nal mat­ters be­fore the courts had been ap­point­ed to po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty and pro­vid­ed with State sup­port.

The for­mer prime min­is­ter fur­ther warned that per­sist­ing with the pro­pos­al de­spite its re­jec­tion re­flect­ed au­thor­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies, say­ing that dou­bling down on a failed ini­tia­tive was “the re­ac­tion of a tyrant.”

He fur­ther ex­pressed con­cern over what he de­scribed as the in­sta­bil­i­ty and un­suit­abil­i­ty of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, warn­ing that pub­lic safe­ty and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty would re­main un­der threat un­der a lead­er­ship he said was un­fit to man­age the coun­try’s af­fairs.