Mickela Panday questions SOE extension

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front po­lit­i­cal leader Mick­ela Pan­day has ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to seek a three-month ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SOE), ar­gu­ing that the move co­in­cides with grow­ing pub­lic crit­i­cism and protest ac­tiv­i­ty rather than sole­ly ef­forts to com­bat crime.

In a video post­ed on so­cial me­dia, Pan­day said she did not be­lieve the pro­posed ex­ten­sion was on­ly about pub­lic safe­ty and crime re­duc­tion, as the Gov­ern­ment has main­tained.

She point­ed to what she de­scribed as a se­quence of events be­gin­ning on May 27, when cit­i­zens protest­ed out­side the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Pan­day, the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced 15 no-protest zones on the same day.

She said nurs­es, work­ers, trade unions and oth­er cit­i­zens sub­se­quent­ly be­came more vo­cal in de­mand­ing an­swers from the Gov­ern­ment, and ques­tioned why law­mak­ers were be­ing asked to ap­prove an­oth­er three months of emer­gency pow­ers be­fore the cur­rent SOE ex­pires on June 17.

“The gov­ern­ment says this is about crime. Let me ask you a sim­ple ques­tion. Do you feel safer? Has crime been de­feat­ed? Has fear dis­ap­peared from our com­mu­ni­ties?” she asked.

Pan­day ar­gued that if the emer­gency mea­sures were ef­fec­tive, there should be no need for an ex­ten­sion, and if they were not ef­fec­tive, cit­i­zens should not be asked to sur­ren­der ad­di­tion­al free­doms.

She al­so crit­i­cised com­ments made by Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who she said sug­gest­ed crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment stemmed from ha­tred, racism or prej­u­dice.

Pan­day re­ject­ed that claim, say­ing cit­i­zens had a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to ques­tion gov­ern­ment de­ci­sions, protest and de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty.

She ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to rewrite his­to­ry by sug­gest­ing that cit­i­zens had not chal­lenged po­lit­i­cal lead­ers in pre­vi­ous years.

As ex­am­ples, she re­ferred to protests led by Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get out­side the home of then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in March 2015, and demon­stra­tions out­side the homes of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in No­vem­ber 2024.

She ar­gued that such demon­stra­tions were ac­cept­ed as le­git­i­mate forms of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ex­pres­sion at the time and ques­tioned why crit­i­cism was now be­ing por­trayed neg­a­tive­ly.

“The peo­ple are not the prob­lem. The peo­ple are the em­ploy­ers. The gov­ern­ment works for the peo­ple, not the oth­er way around,” Pan­day said.

She main­tained that cit­i­zens have the right to ques­tion au­thor­i­ty, chal­lenge gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and protest peace­ful­ly.

Pan­day said she be­lieved the tim­ing of the pro­posed SOE ex­ten­sion raised con­cerns and urged cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue de­mand­ing an­swers from those in pow­er.

“This gov­ern­ment may have the num­bers in par­lia­ment, but the peo­ple still have a voice. And that voice is more pow­er­ful than any par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty,” she said.