Gonzales rejects Govt’s SoE extension defence; wants workable anti-crime plan

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly end the State of Emer­gency (SoE), present a cred­i­ble crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy or step aside, de­scrib­ing the mea­sure as a “na­tion­al sham” and a “po­lit­i­cal hoax” on the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Con­tribut­ing to de­bate on the Gov­ern­ment’s mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE for a fur­ther three months yes­ter­day evening, Gon­za­les said the Op­po­si­tion can no longer sup­port the con­tin­u­a­tion of emer­gency pow­ers, ar­gu­ing that cit­i­zens de­serve a clear and ef­fec­tive plan to tack­le the root caus­es of crime.

“The Op­po­si­tion is say­ing bring it to an end and get down to work—present a work­able, co­her­ent crime plan to ad­dress crime at its root caus­es, be­cause this State of Emer­gency is noth­ing but a na­tion­al sham and a po­lit­i­cal hoax on the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“We call for it to be end­ed im­me­di­ate­ly. Present this coun­try with a work­able crime plan—and if you can­not do so, get out of of­fice.”

Gon­za­les al­so launched a sharp at­tack on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, ac­cus­ing him of de­liv­er­ing a “vile,” di­vi­sive and po­lit­i­cal­ly se­lec­tive con­tri­bu­tion dur­ing the de­bate.

Re­spond­ing to Je­re­mie’s re­marks about tar­get­ing “big fish” white-col­lar crim­i­nals and ref­er­ences to a par­tic­u­lar seg­ment of so­ci­ety, Gon­za­les said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al had crossed a dan­ger­ous line.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al came to this Par­lia­ment in a man­ner I will de­scribe as vile, di­a­bol­i­cal and vi­cious,” Gon­za­les said.

He ac­cused Je­re­mie of cast­ing un­fair sus­pi­cion on an en­tire sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion and im­ply­ing links to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“When the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al can come here threat­en­ing a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion and sug­gest­ing mat­ters should be re­ferred to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, as though an en­tire com­mu­ni­ty is en­gaged in crim­i­nal con­duct, I say to him he is a di­a­bol­i­cal hyp­ocrite,” Gon­za­les said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that crime re­mains a se­ri­ous na­tion­al is­sue, Gon­za­les ar­gued the Gov­ern­ment can­not se­lec­tive­ly pur­sue some al­leged of­fend­ers while re­main­ing silent on ma­jor cor­rup­tion scan­dals.

He not­ed that de­spite Je­re­mie’s em­pha­sis on white-col­lar crime, there was no men­tion of the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) mat­ter.

“I not­ed he made no ref­er­ence what­so­ev­er to the EM­BD white-col­lar crime scan­dal—none,” Gon­za­les said.

He al­so ques­tioned ef­forts to re­cov­er funds linked to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port cor­rup­tion case and raised con­cerns about in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Life­S­port pro­gramme and the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA).

Turn­ing back to the SoE, Gon­za­les re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion that the Op­po­si­tion was un­sup­port­ive of law en­force­ment, not­ing that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment sup­port­ed the ini­tial de­c­la­ra­tion in Ju­ly 2025 due to in­tel­li­gence re­ports al­leg­ing threats to state of­fi­cials and crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

How­ev­er, he ar­gued that de­spite re­peat­ed re­quests, the Gov­ern­ment has failed to pro­vide ev­i­dence on what be­came of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions used to jus­ti­fy the emer­gency pow­ers.

“We asked for in­for­ma­tion. We asked for da­ta. Noth­ing was pre­sent­ed in this House,” he said.

Gon­za­les main­tained that the orig­i­nal SoE was in­tend­ed to ad­dress spe­cif­ic na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threats—not to serve as a broad crime-fight­ing tool—and said Par­lia­ment has yet to re­ceive an­swers on ar­rests, in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the use of the An­ti-Gang Act, even as Gov­ern­ment seeks ap­proval for an­oth­er ex­ten­sion.