Not in favour

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The law to give sweep­ing au­thor­i­ty to the Prime Min­is­ter and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) to des­ig­nate com­mu­ni­ties as se­cu­ri­ty zones and de­ploy ex­pand­ed po­lice and mil­i­tary pow­ers has been de­feat­ed in the Sen­ate.

The Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment 2026 Bill, which re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage, did not re­ceive sup­port from a sin­gle In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor last night. The Gov­ern­ment need­ed at least four In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors to sup­port the leg­is­la­tion for its pas­sage.

How­ev­er, when it came to a vote af­ter four sit­tings of the Up­per House, the 15 Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors vot­ed in favour, 14 vot­ed against, in­clu­sive of eight of the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors and six Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors, and there was one ab­sten­tion - In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Court­ney Mc Nish.

This means when the State of Emer­gency ex­pires on Jan­u­ary 31, the Gov­ern­ment will not be able to im­ple­ment its ZOSO ini­tia­tive, which it said was para­mount to con­tin­u­ing the gains made against the crim­i­nal el­e­ments dur­ing the SoE.

Be­fore the bill went to a vote yes­ter­day in the Up­per House, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie gave the In­de­pen­dent and Op­po­si­tion bench­es no­tice that the Gov­ern­ment would not be mak­ing any amend­ments to the 28 claus­es in the bill.

Dur­ing the Com­mit­tee Stage of the bill where amend­ments are usu­al­ly con­sid­ered, Je­re­mie ex­plained that there was no time to ful­ly ven­ti­late the al­most 50 amend­ments pro­posed by both In­de­pen­dent and Op­po­si­tion bench­es.

“We are maybe 72 hours away from the end of the State of Emer­gency, and we wish to have some­thing in place by then,” Je­re­mie said.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion.

“When I lis­tened to you and Min­is­ter (Wayne) Sturge ini­tial­ly, I was un­der the im­pres­sion that Gov­ern­ment might have been open to tak­ing amend­ments,” Vieira said.

How­ev­er, Je­re­mie took the po­si­tion that the amend­ments pro­posed by the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors were “sub­stan­tial” and should not be dis­missed quick­ly. How­ev­er, again, he said that time did not per­mit any pro­longed dis­course.

“We will not be close to that be­fore the 31st, and some­thing will have to be put in place on the 31st. That is what our in­tel­li­gence agen­cies tell us. I apol­o­gise for that, be­cause that is not the way we nor­mal­ly do busi­ness. But then this de­bate has gone on for a con­sid­er­able pe­ri­od of time,” the AG said.

One of the ma­jor amend­ments pro­posed was to in­sert a “sun­set clause” in­to the bill, which is es­sen­tial­ly an ex­pi­ra­tion date. In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors ar­gued that it would al­low the Gov­ern­ment and Par­lia­ment the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­view the law and its ef­fec­tive­ness.

How­ev­er, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, in wind­ing up the de­bate, re­ject­ed that sug­ges­tion.

“Why no sun­set clause? We say the bill does not re­quire a sun­set clause be­cause clause 28 al­ready pro­vides for a re­view by way of a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee. Fur­ther, the bill is not a short-term mea­sure to ad­dress crim­i­nal­i­ty and es­ca­lat­ing lev­els of vi­o­lence in a so­ci­ety.”

Je­re­mie added, “There’s an­oth­er rea­son why there’s no sun­set clause on it and this has to do with the soft part of the leg­is­la­tion, the So­cial Trans­for­ma­tion Com­mit­tee. Once that starts, I’m told by my col­leagues in Ja­maica that that is ac­tu­al­ly a very pow­er­ful tool in terms of get­ting the com­mu­ni­ties to buy in to the fact that life can be bet­ter with­out the gangs. They are able to ac­cess ser­vices, they are able to come out of their hous­es, they are able to do things that they would not nor­mal­ly do.”

But while Je­re­mie did not ac­cept any amend­ments, he in­vit­ed the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors to have a dis­cus­sion with him at a lat­er date.

“We do, how­ev­er, com­mit to a con­tin­u­ous process of en­gage­ment with the in­de­pen­dents in par­tic­u­lar, and we’d like to dis­cuss with them a struc­ture in which that could take place.”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­siree Mur­ray still brought for­ward her amend­ment for the manda­to­ry use of body cam­eras in ZOSOs. The bill said the body cam­eras should be used but on­ly if the de­vice is avail­able.

How­ev­er, the AG said there is al­ready a stand­ing or­der for the manda­to­ry use of body cam­eras. He said this was one mat­ter that he will con­sid­er, as he be­lieves of­fi­cers in ZOSOs are util­is­ing body cam­eras.

The AG was asked by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne if this means he would de­lay the pas­sage of the bill un­til this is ad­dressed. How­ev­er, Je­re­mie said he did not know the state of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and its body cam­eras. He on­ly re­it­er­at­ed that body cam­eras should be worn by po­lice of­fi­cers.

Fo­cus will now be on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who ear­li­er this month sparked sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al de­bate fol­low­ing her sharp crit­i­cisms of the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors dur­ing the de­lib­er­a­tion of the bill.

The Prime Min­is­ter launched a blis­ter­ing at­tack on crit­ics of the leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the In­de­pen­dent bench, de­scrib­ing them as “weak men and women” and “pseu­do-in­de­pen­dent groups” whom she ac­cused of ef­fec­tive­ly “de­fend­ing vi­o­lent crim­i­nals.”

She went fur­ther, brand­ing some sen­a­tors as “shame­less,” “bootlick­ers” and “brown-nosers,” and sug­gest­ing they were ad­vanc­ing the po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests of the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) rather than act­ing in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

In re­sponse, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, in­clud­ing An­tho­ny Vieira and Michael de la Bastide, re­ject­ed the ac­cu­sa­tions, de­fend­ing their role as one ground­ed in in­de­pen­dent over­sight. They said their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in Par­lia­ment is to ask “un­com­fort­able ques­tions,” scru­ti­nise leg­is­la­tion and hold the Ex­ec­u­tive to ac­count, not to serve as a “rub­ber stamp” for the Gov­ern­ment.

About the bill

The pro­posed Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) Bill, 2026, would have giv­en the Prime Min­is­ter, in con­sul­ta­tion with the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and Chief of De­fence Staff, the au­thor­i­ty to des­ig­nate spe­cif­ic high-crime ar­eas as “Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions” (ZOSOs) where crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is deemed se­ri­ous and es­ca­lat­ing.

Once a zone is de­clared, the leg­is­la­tion would have grant­ed ex­pand­ed pow­ers to a joint po­lice and mil­i­tary com­mand. These in­clud­ed the abil­i­ty to de­ploy com­bined se­cu­ri­ty forces in­to the area, es­tab­lish se­cu­ri­ty cor­dons for up to 24 hours, im­pose cur­fews last­ing as long as 72 hours, and con­duct search­es with­out a war­rant un­der cer­tain con­di­tions. Of­fi­cers could al­so de­tain in­di­vid­u­als sus­pect­ed of in­volve­ment in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, sub­ject to lim­it­ed court over­sight.

A ZOSO could have re­mained in ef­fect for up to 180 days.

Be­yond en­force­ment mea­sures, the bill al­so sought to es­tab­lish a So­cial Com­mit­tee tasked with as­sess­ing non-se­cu­ri­ty needs with­in des­ig­nat­ed zones, in­clud­ing in­fra­struc­ture, hous­ing, health and ed­u­ca­tion, and rec­om­mend­ing so­cial in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes aimed at long-term com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.