Govt heading to Parliament on Wednesday to extend SoE

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Trinidad and To­ba­go will be un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE) un­til Sep­tem­ber, af­ter Gov­ern­ment an­nounced yes­ter­day that it will go to Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day to ex­tend the cur­rent SoE for an­oth­er three months.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day evening, af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar met with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) last Fri­day and re­viewed a num­ber of re­ports which high­light­ed analy­ses of “datasets” re­lat­ed to sig­nif­i­cant lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al threats to State se­cu­ri­ty.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said, “The PNM pre­dict­ed that this in­com­pe­tent UNC Gov­ern­ment would ex­tend the cur­rent SoE—so said, so done.”

Op­po­si­tion Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les al­so said the PNM is await­ing fur­ther ad­vice from se­nior coun­sels on its plan to legal­ly chal­lenge ex­ten­sion of the SoE.

The an­nounce­ment to ex­tend the SoE came days be­fore it was to end on June 17 and the ex­ten­sion is the lat­est in con­tin­ued SoEs.

The Gov­ern­ment’s first SoE be­gan three months in­to its tenure in Ju­ly 2025. This was to deal with a plot from with­in the pris­ons threat­en­ing the lives of per­sons in the State sec­tor, pris­ons, law en­force­ment and ju­di­cial sec­tors and threats to State prop­er­ty. It was ex­tend­ed to Jan­u­ary 2026, when it end­ed.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced a sec­ond SoE on March 3, 2026.

This fol­lowed an in­crease in vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty at­trib­uted to or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs. On March 13, Par­lia­ment—via sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote—ex­tend­ed the SoE for three months, with ef­fect from March 18 up to mid­night on June 17.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had re­cent­ly said the SoE would be ex­tend­ed a fur­ther three months if the NSC rec­om­mend­ed this. The coun­cil, head­ed by the PM, in­cludes the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Min­is­ters of Jus­tice, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, De­fence and oth­ers, plus heads of the TTPS, De­fence Force and Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency.

Ac­cord­ing to yes­ter­day’s state­ment from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, at a meet­ing of the NSC last Fri­day, the Prime Min­is­ter and mem­bers of the coun­cil re­ceived and re­viewed re­ports on the states of emer­gency im­ple­ment­ed be­tween De­cem­ber 2024 and May 2026.

The for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had im­ple­ment­ed an SoE be­tween De­cem­ber 2024 to March 2025 due to a surge in gang war­fare

The AG’s min­istry stat­ed that the re­ports on SoEs be­tween De­cem­ber 2024 and May 2026, “...high­light­ed analy­ses of datasets re­lat­ed to sig­nif­i­cant lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al threats to state se­cu­ri­ty. The re­ports re­vealed that all three SoEs were as­so­ci­at­ed with mean­ing­ful dis­rup­tions in all cat­e­gories of datasets re­viewed and analysed.”

“Af­ter ex­am­in­ing the re­ports and ad­vice from mem­bers of the NSC, the Prime Min­is­ter has de­cid­ed that the Gov­ern­ment will go to Par­lia­ment to re­quest an ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency for a fur­ther three months. A res­o­lu­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency will be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day, 10th June, 2026 in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 10(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion,” the re­lease said.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie did not re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s queries yes­ter­day on de­tails of what the re­ports re­vealed and re­gard­ing the “sig­nif­i­cant lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al threats to State se­cu­ri­ty.”

Je­re­mie is ex­pect­ed to pi­lot the res­o­lu­tion to ex­tend the SoE.

Any ex­ten­sion for an SoE can be passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives with Gov­ern­ment votes alone—a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote—for on­ly up to a max­i­mum pe­ri­od of six months.

An ex­ten­sion of an SoE be­yond six months re­quires a three-fifths—spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote—in both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment.

Last Fri­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo had said the House would meet on Wednes­day on a Fi­nance Bill that would in­crease fines/penal­ties and deal with oth­er mat­ters.

Yes­ter­day, Tan­coo didn’t re­ply on whether the Fi­nance Bill would be post­poned due to the SoE ex­ten­sion de­bate.

But Gov­ern­ment House leader Bar­ry Padarath sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed, “Both the SoE ex­ten­sion and the Fi­nance bill will be on the House’s agen­da on Wednes­day and are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed at Wednes­day’s sit­ting.”

Op­po­si­tion Leader Beck­les yes­ter­day reaf­firmed her par­ty’s dis­ap­proval of an­oth­er SoE ex­ten­sion.

“The Op­po­si­tion re­jects this ex­ten­sion of op­pres­sion. A State of Emer­gency was nev­er meant to be­come per­ma­nent gov­er­nance,” Beck­les said.

“The PNM will not sup­port this ex­ten­sion. The UNC has no crime plan and can­not con­tin­ue to re­strict our cit­i­zens’ free­dom, and ar­rest those who dare to voice dis­con­tent with their ac­tions and dis­agree. T&T is a democ­ra­cy, not a po­lice state. Cit­i­zens have the right to live with­out fear.”

Op­po­si­tion Whip Gon­za­les said, “The Op­po­si­tion is ready to go to Par­lia­ment and de­fend the coun­try against a Gov­ern­ment that is us­ing a SoE to sup­press dis­sent and the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of the cit­i­zens for its elec­toral sur­vival ... we are await­ing fur­ther ad­vice from se­nior coun­sels.”

Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young added, “A SoE is a very se­ri­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ter and it’s our po­si­tion that the Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment is abus­ing it. On the last oc­ca­sion that the Gov­ern­ment in­sti­tut­ed a SoE three months ago, they gave no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“It’s clear from (Wayne) Sturge’s in­ter­view, the UNC’s on­ly crime plan is to roll SoEs—and the Op­po­si­tion PNM will not sup­port this! It’s con­tin­ued abuse of cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. We’ve seen use of the SoE to cen­sor cit­i­zens who speak against the Prime Min­is­ter’s ills, de­tain­ing them us­ing SoE reg­u­la­tions and pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders.”

He added, “We’re al­so wit­ness­ing Gov­ern­ment’s use of the SoE to pre­vent cit­i­zens from peace­ful­ly protest­ing and ex­press­ing their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with T&T’s state. These are at­tacks on democ­ra­cy and ev­i­dence of abuse of our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights—the Gov­ern­ment is fail­ing spec­tac­u­lar­ly!”