Hosein backs PM on SoE; mum on Govt support of Iran attack

Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs and Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to de­clare a State of Emer­gency (SoE), ac­cus­ing the Op­po­si­tion of politi­cis­ing a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty while re­it­er­at­ing that the mea­sure was nec­es­sary to ad­dress cred­i­ble crim­i­nal threats.

Ho­sein, a Mus­lim, has, how­ev­er, re­mained mum on the Gov­ern­ment's sup­port for the US at­tack on Iran. Is­rael is al­so sup­port­ing the US in the fight.

In a state­ment is­sued to­day fol­low­ing crit­i­cism from the Op­po­si­tion, Ho­sein said the de­ci­sion to in­voke emer­gency pow­ers was not tak­en light­ly but was based on what he de­scribed as an ur­gent need to pro­tect law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and mem­bers of the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices.

He said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar act­ed in re­sponse to in­tel­li­gence in­di­cat­ing se­ri­ous threats posed by crim­i­nal el­e­ments and placed the safe­ty of cit­i­zens above po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions.

“At a time when the Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing de­ci­sive ac­tion to pro­tect the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it is deeply dis­ap­point­ing that the Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ues to play pol­i­tics with an is­sue as se­ri­ous as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty,” Ho­sein said.

He added that the ad­min­is­tra­tion “is not one to gam­ble with the safe­ty of our peo­ple to sat­is­fy the sen­si­tiv­i­ties of the Op­po­si­tion,” main­tain­ing that strong mea­sures were re­quired to con­front es­ca­lat­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Ho­sein al­so re­ject­ed claims by the Op­po­si­tion Leader that cer­tain pro­vi­sions with­in the cur­rent SoE reg­u­la­tions un­der­mine de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples or sig­nal a move to­ward dic­ta­tor­ship. He said the pro­vi­sions be­ing crit­i­cised are iden­ti­cal to those con­tained in the 2024 State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions en­act­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“It is iron­ic that those who are now crit­i­cis­ing this de­ci­sion were de­mand­ing that the Gov­ern­ment do some­thing about crime,” he said, de­scrib­ing the ob­jec­tions as “hyp­o­crit­i­cal and base­less.”

Ho­sein stressed that the Gov­ern­ment would not be de­terred by crit­i­cism and would con­tin­ue what he termed “the se­ri­ous work re­quired” to en­sure na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pre­vent crim­i­nals from desta­bil­is­ing the coun­try.

The de­c­la­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency grants ex­pand­ed pow­ers to law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing en­hanced de­ten­tion and search ca­pa­bil­i­ties, as part of broad­er ef­forts to curb crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

The Op­po­si­tion has main­tained its con­cerns about the scope and im­pli­ca­tions of the emer­gency pow­ers, while the Gov­ern­ment has urged bi­par­ti­san sup­port in con­fronting crime.