Independent senator: Put ZOSOs on hold, extend SoE

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Fran­cis Lewis is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) in or­der to ad­dress the con­cerns be­ing ex­pressed about the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) law.

Con­tribut­ing to the de­bate on the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill, 2026, in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Lewis de­scribed the bill as “for­ward-think­ing” and “in­no­v­a­tive.”

Lewis said while he ap­pre­ci­ates that the Gov­ern­ment wants to im­ple­ment the ZOSO law with ur­gency so that the gains achieved with the SoE are not lost, he be­lieves all sen­a­tors need to en­sure they get the law right.

There­fore, the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor is rec­om­mend­ing that an­oth­er SoE be put in place at least un­til af­ter Car­ni­val.

“Con­sid­er if we should not ex­tend the State of Emer­gency through Car­ni­val, be­cause Car­ni­val is right there, not be­yond that. The point I’m mak­ing is, and I don’t know if it’s pos­si­ble, it would have to be looked at by the tech­ni­cal peo­ple, and cer­tain­ly the se­cu­ri­ty chiefs will have to have a point, through the re­spec­tive chains of com­mand, to opine on that. But speak­ing from the po­si­tion of ig­no­rance that I have, I won­der whether that’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty to give us the time we need­ed to get this right,” Lewis said.

The cur­rent SoE ex­pires on Jan­u­ary 31.

Lewis said the ZOSO bill needs a del­i­cate bal­ance of “se­cu­ri­ty and rights.”

“One of my col­leagues ar­gued, or sug­gest­ed, a very lim­it­ed Sen­ate Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee could be very use­ful in work­ing through some of this, oth­er than a to and fro across the floor.”

Like In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Josh Dray­ton, Lewis is al­so call­ing for a “sun­set clause.” In par­lia­men­tary law and leg­is­la­tion, a sun­set clause is a spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sion that en­sures a law will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ex­pire af­ter a cer­tain date un­less the leg­is­la­ture votes to re­new it.

“I think a sun­set clause is nec­es­sary be­cause we need to for­mal­ly re­view, not just sim­ply re­view as put in­to the last clause of the bill, but re­al­ly look and bring it back to this par­lia­ment so it can be re­viewed.” He sug­gest­ed that the bill be re­viewed in two or three years.

The In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor al­so ex­pressed con­cern with Clause 6 of the bill, which speaks to the pow­ers that the Prime Min­is­ter will have.

“The clause states the Prime Min­is­ter in coun­cil may or­der and de­clare any ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly de­fined area with­in a sin­gle con­tigu­ous bound­ary with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go as a zone. This places sig­nif­i­cant con­cen­tra­tions of pow­er in the hands of a Prime Min­is­ter. And please, let me be clear, guys, I am not talk­ing about the present in­cum­bent.”

He added that “it rais­es a fun­da­men­tal con­cern” about coun­ter­bal­ance and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Sen­a­tor Lewis said there was a need to strength­en Par­lia­ment’s abil­i­ty to scru­ti­nise de­bate and, when nec­es­sary, re­strain ex­ec­u­tive ac­tion.

“I there­fore sug­gest that any de­c­la­ra­tion of ex­ten­sion be­yond a short pe­ri­od should re­quire af­fir­ma­tive par­lia­men­tary ap­proval.”

The leg­is­la­tion al­lows the Prime Min­is­ter to de­clare a com­mu­ni­ty a “zone” for up to 180 days. The sen­a­tor is sug­gest­ing a short­er time frame.

“We may want to ex­per­i­ment, as Ja­maica did, with short­er time pe­ri­ods, be­cause when you say you have six months, six months of lived ex­pe­ri­ence in a com­mu­ni­ty that is un­der ZOSO is not an easy thing, and you want this to be in and out first.”

The Gov­ern­ment needs at least four in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to sup­port the bill. Pro­posed amend­ments to the bill would be de­lib­er­at­ed dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage of the de­bate. The bill did not go to a vote yes­ter­day. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the Gov­ern­ment is await­ing the re­turn of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to wind up the de­bate. He is ex­pect­ed to come back from of­fi­cial busi­ness in Bar­ba­dos on Sun­day.

Alexan­der: Bill a nec­es­sary 'poi­son'

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der is de­scrib­ing the Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions bill as a nec­es­sary “poi­son.”

“No­body in their right mind would put chemother­a­py in their body. The chem­i­cal that is chemother­a­py—no­body in their right mind would put that in their body. It’s poi­son. But it’s the poi­son that you need to get rid of a big­ger poi­son,” Alexan­der said dur­ing the de­bate yes­ter­day in the Up­per House.

He added, “Ra­di­a­tion strips your body of hair, you lose weight, and you vom­it for days, but you do these things be­cause you see an op­por­tu­ni­ty to get bet­ter, and that is the pur­pose of the zones of spe­cial op­er­a­tions.”

Sen­a­tor Alexan­der said there was no “per­fect” way to deal with vi­o­lent crime and mur­der­ers.

On Wednes­day in the Sen­ate, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said the tar­get­ing of cer­tain con­sti­tu­tion­al rights was a “small price to pay” to get il­le­gal guns off the streets.

But re­spond­ing to Alexan­der’s “chemother­a­py” anal­o­gy, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man said doc­tors usu­al­ly con­sult with a pa­tient be­fore ad­min­is­ter­ing that type of treat­ment.

She told the Up­per House yes­ter­day, “I am cer­tain that the med­ical doc­tors in our midst will tell us that be­fore you treat a can­cer pa­tient with chemother­a­py, that pa­tient along­side doc­tors un­der­goes an as­sess­ment to de­ter­mine whether or not the chemother­a­py would be more harm­ful or if it would be more hurt­ful to the pa­tient.” She added that if the as­sess­ment shows that chemother­a­py is more harm­ful to the pa­tient than it is help­ful then an­oth­er al­ter­na­tive would be sought.