President issues legal notice approving latest SoE

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo says she is sat­is­fied that a pub­lic emer­gency has arisen that would en­dan­ger the pub­lic's safe­ty and has is­sued the req­ui­site le­gal no­tice for an­oth­er State of Emer­gency.

This, af­ter the SoE was de­clared at 3.50 am to­day by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The pre­vi­ous SoE an­nounced by her Gov­ern­ment in Ju­ly 2025 had end­ed on Jan­u­ary 31, 2026.

De­tails on the new SoE were giv­en dur­ing a Gov­ern­ment me­dia brief­ing held by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie this morn­ing.

The Prime Min­is­ter had stat­ed that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC) met at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre yes­ter­day (Mon) and re­ceived se­cu­ri­ty brief­in­gs from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, Chief of De­fence Staff Don Po­lo and the Head of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) Ali­cia Hen­ry.

The NSC not­ed that fol­low­ing the end of the pre­vi­ous SoE on Jan­u­ary 31, there has been an in­crease in vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty across the coun­try, most of which has been car­ried out by mem­bers of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs.

The NSC fur­ther not­ed that sev­er­al of these acts of crim­i­nal­i­ty have re­sult­ed in mul­ti­ple deaths due to mass shoot­ings and that the con­tin­u­ance of reprisal shoot­ings amongst crim­i­nal gangs, if left unchecked, would en­dan­ger pub­lic safe­ty.

The NSC was in­formed that in­tel­li­gence re­cent­ly gath­ered in­di­cates cred­i­ble threats to at­tack po­lice of­fi­cers, prison of­fi­cers and oth­er mem­bers of the se­cu­ri­ty and le­gal ser­vices.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, "I had pre­vi­ous­ly warned the crim­i­nal gangs and de­tainees re­leased from prison that de­cent law-abid­ing cit­i­zens are fed up with their crim­i­nal­i­ty, and if they can­not be­have them­selves, I would have no hes­i­ta­tion in hav­ing an­oth­er SoE de­clared.

"I al­so in­di­cat­ed that vi­o­lent gang mem­bers would be re­turned straight to prison, and this time, their friends and fam­i­ly who aid their crim­i­nal­i­ty would ac­com­pa­ny them. I re­it­er­ate my words that if crim­i­nals want to ter­rorise law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and their fam­i­lies, I will do every­thing legal­ly pos­si­ble to ter­rorise crim­i­nals and those who aid and abet them."

She added, "This mea­sure is con­sis­tent with your Gov­ern­ment’s ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to crime and crim­i­nal gangs, as demon­strat­ed by nu­mer­ous suc­cess­ful, strate­gic op­er­a­tions con­duct­ed by the TTPS and the armed forces over the last 10 months, leg­is­la­tion in­tro­duced in Par­lia­ment to em­pow­er and pro­tect law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, and on­go­ing re­forms to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

"Your Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to utilise all avail­able re­sources to en­sure that the gains we have achieved in sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing the mur­der rates and the in­ci­dents of vi­o­lent crime against cit­i­zens are not re­versed and over­turned by those who are de­ter­mined to in­flict death, hard­ship and tor­ment up­on our peo­ple."

The NSC im­me­di­ate­ly ad­vised Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo to de­clare that a State of Pub­lic Emer­gency ex­ists in Trinidad and To­ba­go with ef­fect from March 3rd, 2026.

On March 2nd, 2026, Her Ex­cel­len­cy de­clared so.

In the Le­gal No­tice 39 (No. 4 of 2026) is­sued by Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo, the Pres­i­dent stat­ed,"... I, CHRIS­TINE CAR­LA KAN­GA­LOO, Pres­i­dent as afore­said, in pur­suance of the pow­ers con­ferred up­on me by sec­tion 8(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion here­by de­clare that:

(a) I am sat­is­fied that a pub­lic emer­gency has risen as a re­sult of the oc­cur­rence of ac­tion that has been tak­en, or is im­me­di­ate­ly threat­ened, by any per­son, of such a na­ture and on so ex­ten­sive a scale, as to be like­ly to en­dan­ger the pub­lic safe­ty; and

(b) A state of pub­lic emer­gency ex­ists in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go with ef­fect from Tues­day, 3rd March, 2026."

The Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to go to Par­lia­ment soon to de­bate the SoE, which is pro­ject­ed to be for three months ini­tial­ly.

Sources said a cur­few isn't ex­pect­ed.

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) had no im­me­di­ate re­ply ear­ly this morn­ing, since Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ny Beck­les said she would speak at the PNM's 10 am me­dia con­fer­ence. How­ev­er, some PN­Mites in dif­fer­ent ar­eas said it seemed as though the Gov­ern­ment "has no crime plans at all."

Mean­while, for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) min­is­ter Dr De­vant Ma­haraj stat­ed, "The de­c­la­ra­tion of an­oth­er SoE clear­ly shows the Gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to deal with crime and their fail­ure to re­form the TTPS to ad­dress crim­i­nal cir­cum­stances.

"They have used the 'killer op­tion' as if it's the Morn­ing Af­ter pill - and it is ac­tu­al­ly the Plan B pill for them. In these cir­cum­stances, the Gov­ern­ment should now look at bring­ing back Gary Grif­fith."

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said, "An­oth­er SoE was some­thing ex­pect­ed, since the Gov­ern­ment was un­able to get the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tion Zones (ZOSO) Bill passed in Par­lia­ment re­cent­ly. Then, it was clear­ly sig­nalled what would oc­cur if crime con­tin­ued and they have now im­ple­ment­ed the SoE again as a con­ve­nient mech­a­nism fol­low­ing dou­ble and triple mur­ders that have arisen."

He added, "These are very con­cern­ing not on­ly for the spe­cif­ic ar­eas where they have been oc­cur­ring, but al­so the Gov­ern­ment is fight­ing hard to re­duce the num­ber of mur­ders - even by 10 - if they can, from the pre­vi­ous year, to show they are mak­ing an im­pact.

"As to im­pact over­all... T&T lived un­der an SoE for most of last year and life went on for peo­ple nor­mal­ly. I sus­pect they will im­ple­ment the same reg­u­la­tions as was used in the last SoE which end­ed in Jan­u­ary."

Sev­er­al busi­ness­peo­ple wel­comed the move to deal with the crime sit­u­a­tion, which es­ca­lat­ed soon af­ter the SoE was re­moved, but they al­so voiced con­cern about the im­pact of an­oth­er SoE on in­vest­ment.

This is T&T's eighth SoE. This coun­try has had SoEs in var­i­ous forms to deal with dif­fer­ent is­sues over the years:

* 1970 (Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion)

* 1995 (lim­it­ed state of emer­gency around then House Speak­er Oc­cach Sea­paul's house)

* 1990 (Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen at­tempt­ed coup at­tempt)

* 2011 (to deal with crime)

* 2021 (COVID-19 re­lat­ed)

* 2024 (to deal with crime)

* Ju­ly 2025 (al­so to deal with crime. This end­ed in Jan­u­ary 2026).

The pre­vi­ous SoE did not have a cur­few or as­sem­bly re­stric­tions, but fo­cused on en­hanced po­lice au­thor­i­ty.

Un­der the SoE, the TTPS and mil­i­tary now have in­creased pow­ers to search premis­es and ar­rest in­di­vid­u­als on sus­pi­cion of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. Per­sons de­tained must be in­formed of the rea­sons for their de­ten­tion, have the right to le­gal coun­sel and can re­quest a re­view of their case be­fore a tri­bunal.