PM says No Rights Are Absolute as She Defends SoE

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s use of emer­gency pow­ers, in­sist­ing that re­stric­tions im­posed un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE), in­clud­ing the con­tro­ver­sial 500-me­tre no-protest zones, are law­ful, con­sti­tu­tion­al and nec­es­sary to pro­tect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Speak­ing dur­ing Wednes­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate on Gov­ern­ment’s mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE for a fur­ther three months, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued that crit­ics were ig­nor­ing a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of con­sti­tu­tion­al law.

“Any lawyer do­ing Law 101 knows that no rights are ab­solute. Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are nev­er ab­solute,” she told the House.

The Prime Min­is­ter said free­doms such as speech, as­sem­bly and as­so­ci­a­tion are all sub­ject to reg­u­la­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing a State of Emer­gency au­tho­rised un­der Sec­tions 8, 9 and 10 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“So when you speak about free­dom of as­sem­bly, it could nev­er be that every­body will as­sem­ble in the same place at the same time. There are reg­u­la­tions. These are reg­u­lat­ed. There’s no ab­solute free­dom,” she said.

She main­tained that every mea­sure im­ple­ment­ed since the de­c­la­ra­tion of the SoE on March 3 has been car­ried out with­in the frame­work of the Con­sti­tu­tion and in ac­cor­dance with pow­ers grant­ed dur­ing a pub­lic emer­gency.

“The Con­sti­tu­tion it­self pro­vides for when these rights can be over­shad­owed or reg­u­lat­ed. So we are work­ing with­in the con­fines of the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The Prime Min­is­ter re­ject­ed claims that Gov­ern­ment had stripped cit­i­zens of their rights, ar­gu­ing that op­po­nents of the emer­gency mea­sures were con­tin­u­ing to ex­er­cise the very free­doms they claimed were be­ing sup­pressed.

“We have not tak­en away that right,” she said, re­fer­ring to ac­cess to the courts.

She ques­tioned whether any­one had ac­tu­al­ly lost their free­dom of move­ment, free­dom of ex­pres­sion or free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion.

“Is any­body stop­ping you from com­ing to Par­lia­ment? Is your free­dom of move­ment im­ped­ed?”

“When you’re gath­er­ing to­mor­row in your meet­ing, is any­body stop­ping you from as­sem­bling? As­so­ci­at­ing? Is any­body stop­ping you from speak­ing? Where are your rights? Which rights are be­ing im­ped­ed?” she asked.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said on­ly those in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty had seen their ac­tiv­i­ties dis­rupt­ed by the emer­gency reg­u­la­tions.

“The on­ly per­sons I’ve im­ped­ed are those who are not law-abid­ing.”

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so ac­cused crit­ics of en­gag­ing in what she de­scribed as an “oxy­moron­ic” ar­gu­ment by hold­ing pub­lic meet­ings and demon­stra­tions while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly claim­ing they were be­ing pre­vent­ed from protest­ing.

“It is oxy­moron­ic for peo­ple to stand up on a pub­lic plat­form and say their free­dom of ex­pres­sion is be­ing tak­en away. You’re stand­ing on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form say­ing every­thing un­der the sun and say­ing your free­dom of ex­pres­sion is be­ing hin­dered.”

Ad­dress­ing crit­i­cism of the re­cent­ly es­tab­lished no-protest zones around key State in­sti­tu­tions, Per­sad-Bisses­sar sought to demon­strate that the re­stric­tions af­fect­ed on­ly a tiny por­tion of the coun­try’s land area.

Ac­cord­ing to cal­cu­la­tions she pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s to­tal land area is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,131 square kilo­me­tres, while the 500-me­tre re­strict­ed zones sur­round­ing the 15 des­ig­nat­ed build­ings cov­er on­ly 11.77 square kilo­me­tres.

“That is 0.23 per cent of our to­tal land area,” she said.

“There­fore, all cit­i­zens have 5,119.23 square kilo­me­tres of land where they can protest.”

She added that this means cit­i­zens still have ac­cess to 99.77 per cent of the coun­try’s ter­ri­to­ry for demon­stra­tions, as­sem­blies and oth­er pub­lic gath­er­ings.

The Prime Min­is­ter point­ed to a “protest” held out­side the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter this week as ev­i­dence that cit­i­zens re­main free to demon­strate.

“These peo­ple de­liv­ered a let­ter to my of­fice yes­ter­day, and a re­sponse will be forth­com­ing,” she said.

Re­fer­ring to the group of trade unions that de­liv­ered a let­ter ask­ing that the PM re­con­sid­er the 15 no-protest zones, Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that they gath­ered out­side her of­fice de­spite claim­ing the reg­u­la­tions pre­vent­ed protests.

“You’re out­side the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and you’re say­ing you can­not protest, but you’re out there, 13 peo­ple gath­ered in an as­sem­bly. You de­liv­er this let­ter.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so of­fered a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the 500-me­tre ex­clu­sion zones.

“At that dis­tance, I am told, the ef­fects of small arms and ri­fle gun­fire are negat­ed,” she said.

She ar­gued that the re­stric­tions were in­tro­duced fol­low­ing what she de­scribed as re­peat­ed at­tempts to pro­voke po­lice of­fi­cers and the gath­er­ing out­side the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) dur­ing the “19 Bul­lets, 19 Protests” cam­paign.

“The ac­tion was tak­en fol­low­ing re­peat­ed at­tempts to pro­voke the TTPS and the mob­bing of the Of­fice of the DPP.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said the State had a du­ty not on­ly to pro­tect le­git­i­mate pro­test­ers but al­so pub­lic ser­vants, vis­i­tors and work­ers op­er­at­ing with­in crit­i­cal gov­ern­ment fa­cil­i­ties.

“The State has a du­ty to pro­tect le­git­i­mate pro­test­ers. I ac­knowl­edge that. To pro­tect pub­lic ser­vants. To pro­tect cit­i­zens work­ing in and vis­it­ing crit­i­cal, high-risk, high-se­cu­ri­ty build­ings.”

She fur­ther claimed in­tel­li­gence re­ports in­di­cat­ed that some pub­lic gath­er­ings had been in­fil­trat­ed by crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“Gath­er­ings were be­ing in­fil­trat­ed by gang mem­bers. That’s what the in­tel­li­gence shows us.”

Turn­ing to the broad­er ques­tion of whether the SoE should con­tin­ue, Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tained that the mea­sure re­mains nec­es­sary be­cause crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions have not yet been dis­man­tled.

“The state of emer­gency is not an af­front to lib­er­ty,” she said.

“For now, giv­en where we are with the state of law­less­ness, this SoE acts like a guardian.”

She ar­gued that crim­i­nal syn­di­cates re­main ac­tive and that on­go­ing in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tions re­quire ad­di­tion­al time to iden­ti­fy and pros­e­cute those re­spon­si­ble for se­ri­ous vi­o­lence.

“They re­main em­bold­ened, they re­main or­gan­ised and they re­main pa­tient.”

“To with­draw the mea­sures now pre­ma­ture­ly would be for us to sur­ren­der hard-won ground and im­per­a­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions of sin­gu­lar na­tion­al im­por­tance.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so point­ed to what she said were mea­sur­able re­duc­tions in crime dur­ing the emer­gency pe­ri­od, cit­ing fig­ures pre­sent­ed ear­li­er in the de­bate by Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters.

“Why would there be a 42 per cent de­crease in homi­cides if it were not work­ing?” she asked.

The Prime Min­is­ter end­ed by in­sist­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens sup­port the con­tin­u­a­tion of the emer­gency mea­sures.

“I caused a poll to be done and the ma­jor­i­ty of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens sup­port the ex­ten­sion of the SoE,” she said.

Lat­er in her con­tri­bu­tion she again ref­er­enced polling com­mis­sioned by her ad­min­is­tra­tion, say­ing it showed “full sup­port by the ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple of our coun­try” and high lev­els of con­fi­dence in the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

“I say again that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens back the SoE,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared, adding that the tem­po­rary mea­sures were nec­es­sary to pre­vent Trinidad and To­ba­go from en­dur­ing “an­oth­er vi­o­lent 25 years” of crime and blood­shed.