Penny again slams Govt for protest ban

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les last night ac­cused un­named in­di­vid­u­als of at­tempt­ing to sup­press the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) can­dle­light vig­il in de­fence of free­dom and democ­ra­cy in San Juan.

Ad­dress­ing hun­dreds of sup­port­ers gath­ered at the Croisee Plaza, Beck­les al­leged ef­forts had been made to pre­vent the gath­er­ing from tak­ing place.

“Al­lyuh know they didn’t want us to have this vig­il tonight? Al­lyuh know they didn’t want us to have this meet­ing tonight? They don’t un­der­stand the pow­er of the PNM. They don’t un­der­stand the pow­er of the peo­ple,” Beck­les said.

She crit­i­cised T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­stric­tions on protests dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE), ques­tion­ing why demon­stra­tors were be­ing pre­vent­ed from gath­er­ing at 15 lo­ca­tions across the coun­try.

“What it is in ANR Robin­son Air­port that they ent want you to protest? They don’t want you to go Pi­ar­co. They don’t want you to go by the Par­lia­ment. They don’t want you to go by the Min­istry of Fi­nance. I mean, they don’t want you to go by the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre but she not liv­ing there!”

Draw­ing a com­par­i­son with state­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who in 2018 en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to rest and re­flect, Beck­les ar­gued that demon­stra­tions out­side Par­lia­ment were a nor­mal part of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic life.

“It is nor­mal for peo­ple to protest in front the Par­lia­ment. As a mat­ter of fact, if you’re a politi­cian and you can’t take pi­cong, and you can’t pass in front of the Par­lia­ment and take pi­cong, you should not be a politi­cian,” she told the crowd.

Beck­les al­so ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of in­tim­i­dat­ing crit­ics.

“When a Gov­ern­ment threat­ens cit­i­zens every day, and keeps warn­ing you about what you say, what you say on your phone, when they threat­en­ing so­cial me­dia ac­tivists and they want to threat­en politi­cians, it is a dic­ta­tor­ship.”

Re­fer­ring the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ po­lit­i­cal roots, she said: “We un­der­stand that she can’t re­al­ly march. But if you can’t march, and if you can’t walk, and if you can’t run a 5K, don’t stop no­body. And if it is you want to run the coun­try from your house in the Philip­pines, don’t stop Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans from even a peace­ful protest. Be­cause they don’t want no kind of protest.”

Al­so ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing, PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les said they will chal­lenge any at­tempt to ex­tend the SoE via the courts.

“Very soon, the Gov­ern­ment has served its in­ten­tion to go back to Par­lia­ment to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency to hold us in sup­pres­sion. Tonight (last night), we wish to serve no­tice to the Gov­ern­ment that we have al­ready as­sem­bled our team of at­tor­neys, who will be pre­pared to go to the court and file a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion to bring an end to this un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al state of emer­gency in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He said a sim­i­lar le­gal chal­lenge in Ja­maica re­sult­ed in a court rul­ing that the re­peat­ed use of states of emer­gency as a crime-fight­ing mea­sure was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

He al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her ab­sence from post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­in­gs and again called for the re­moval of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge.

“The se­cu­ri­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not re­side in the hands of dis­grace­ful peo­ple like Roger Alexan­der, like Phillip Alexan­der, like Anil Roberts and that whole bunch of mis­fits. We have to chase them out of of­fice,” he said to loud cheers from the crowd.

The event con­clud­ed with gospel mu­sic and sup­port­ers hold­ing aloft can­dles and flash­ing cell­phone lights.