Mixed reactions to new SoE

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

There have been mixed re­ac­tions from past and present politi­cians to the sec­ond State of Emer­gency im­ple­ment­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment in the 11 months it has been in of­fice.

This fol­lows Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ear­ly morn­ing an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day of the new SoE.

A pre­vi­ous SoE an­nounced by her Gov­ern­ment in Ju­ly 2025—and ex­tend­ed last Sep­tem­ber—end­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2026. Then, the Prime Min­is­ter had warned crim­i­nal gangs and de­tainees held and re­leased when the mea­sure end­ed that if they couldn’t be­have them­selves, she would have no hes­i­ta­tion in de­clar­ing an­oth­er SoE.

Yes­ter­day, for­mer min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath knocked the de­vel­op­ment.

“An­oth­er SoE, an­oth­er round of hope­less jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. This has be­come a Gov­ern­ment by per­pet­u­al emer­gency. An­oth­er sus­pen­sion of nor­mal­cy dressed up as ‘de­ci­sive lead­er­ship’,” he said.

“The de­c­la­ra­tion is less a tool of last re­sort and more a con­fes­sion that the Gov­ern­ment has no plan to deal with crime, nev­er had, and this is sim­ply a state­ment of ab­ject fail­ure. An SoE doesn’t sig­nal strength or strate­gic mas­tery. It’s an ad­mis­sion that the or­di­nary in­stru­ments of gov­er­nance, i.e., in­tel­li­gence, polic­ing, pros­e­cu­tion, and pre­ven­tion, have all failed- the po­lit­i­cal equiv­a­lent of pulling the fire alarm be­cause you nev­er both­ered to in­stall smoke de­tec­tors.”

Bharath added, “This is es­pe­cial­ly damn­ing giv­en the lofty promis­es made on the cam­paign trail. It’s to­tal­ly con­trary to the Prime Min­is­ter’s bold, au­da­cious state­ments at Cari­com that ‘Amer­i­can mil­i­tary ac­tion in the Caribbean caused the mur­der rate to de­cline by 42 per cent’. Have they de­part­ed? Has the radar been re­moved? The UNC spent 10 years in op­po­si­tion crit­i­cis­ing from the side­lines, in­sist­ing they had all the an­swers, on­ly to reach of­fice and de­fault to emer­gency rule.”

Slam­ming the UNC on what he called failed, fee­ble crime con­trol at­tempts, Bharath said, “Com­mu­ni­ties re­main trapped be­tween gangs and grief. Moth­ers bury sons. Small busi­ness­es close ear­li­er. Cit­i­zens al­ter life in qui­et sur­ren­der to fear.

“A SoE may tem­porar­i­ly sup­press symp­toms, but it doesn’t treat the dis­ease. Crime net­works adapt. Il­lic­it economies mu­tate. With­out deep struc­tur­al re­form of polic­ing, bor­der con­trol, so­cial in­ter­ven­tion, ju­di­cial ef­fi­cien­cy, and an­ti-cor­rup­tion mech­a­nisms, the cy­cle sim­ply re­sets. This Gov­ern­ment, which promised readi­ness, seems star­tled by re­al­i­ty. Emer­gency pow­ers are be­ing nor­malised be­cause long-term plan­ning seems be­yond them. Cit­i­zens are asked to trade civ­il lib­er­ties for se­cu­ri­ty with­out ev­i­dence that this trade will yield re­sults.”

Bharath said emer­gency pow­ers must be rare, tar­get­ed, and time-bound.

“They can­not be­come gov­er­nance by re­flex. The pop­u­la­tion de­serves more than cri­sis man­age­ment... de­clar­ing an­oth­er SoE may project ur­gency, but ur­gency with­out strat­e­gy is pan­ic - a na­tion can­not be gov­erned on pan­ic.”

Con­gress of the Peo­ple chair­man Lons­dale Williams said, “Hav­ing not been able to have the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion Zones Leg­is­la­tion passed, the Gov­ern­ment may have been left with no choice but to re­in­state an SoE. How­ev­er, the SoE could have been lim­it­ed to Trinidad, as To­ba­go will sure­ly ex­pe­ri­ence some neg­a­tive tourism-re­lat­ed re­spons­es to this new de­c­la­ra­tion.

“We look for­ward to more in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es go­ing for­ward, in­clud­ing im­proved em­ploy­ment rates that might serve as mit­i­gat­ing the in­crease in the over­all rates of crime,” Williams added.

COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har said he would speak on the is­sue at a fu­ture me­dia brief­ing.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith says while he nev­er saw SoEs as a crime-fight­ing tool, the Prime Min­is­ter had no choice but to in­sti­tute one to save lives, and she did the cor­rect thing.

He said this was nec­es­sary if peo­ple lacked the ca­pa­bil­i­ty, sys­tems and 21st-cen­tu­ry ex­per­tise in polic­ing to op­er­ate in­no­v­a­tive­ly “out of the box,” since that is what’s need­ed. Grif­fith de­tailed the mea­sures and sys­tems that were in place from 2014 to 2015, when an SoE wasn’t need­ed.

“This com­mis­sion­er, over the last year, we have seen no poli­cies, no pro­grammes, no units, no tech­nol­o­gy, no high vis­i­bil­i­ty, no rapid re­sponse,” Grif­fith said.

“So, while peo­ple are crit­i­cis­ing the SoE now, the Prime Min­is­ter has done the cor­rect thing for T&T, “he added.

Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said, “We in NATUC note the de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of Pub­lic Emer­gency by the Prime Min­is­ter in re­sponse to the re­cent surge in vi­o­lent crime. We un­equiv­o­cal­ly con­demn crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and sup­port law­ful mea­sures aimed at pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, who con­tin­ue to face se­ri­ous threats in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties.

“We view crime as a se­ri­ous na­tion­al is­sue that re­quires not on­ly en­force­ment but sus­tained so­cial and eco­nom­ic strate­gies, and that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and civ­il lib­er­ties re­main bal­anced in the in­ter­est of all cit­i­zens.”