Scotland vows to mobilise constituents against bill: ‘We do not agree with this’

OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land says he will mo­bilise his con­stituents against the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, as for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle are ques­tion­ing how much pow­er the Prime Min­is­ter will have un­der the bill.

Al-Rawi called for its im­me­di­ate with­draw­al and warned that the Sen­ate’s de­ci­sion could de­ter­mine whether the coun­try moves to­wards what he called a po­lice state.

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill 2026 was passed in the Low­er House ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing with­out sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. The bill now heads to the Sen­ate on Wednes­day for de­bate.

Speak­ing dur­ing a PNM news con­fer­ence af­ter a Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing yes­ter­day at Bal­isi­er House, Scot­land said he in­tend­ed to or­gan­ise his con­stituents to ex­press their op­po­si­tion.

“My next step is to meet with my con­stituents and mo­bilise them. Mo­bilise them in a le­gal frame­work to let their voic­es and their feet be heard.

“We will first go on our knees and then we’ll rise from our knees, and we’ll be on our heels and toes be­cause we do not agree with this.”

Scot­land said con­stituents were rais­ing con­cerns about search­es and the seizure of prop­er­ty with­out court in­ter­ven­tion.

Scot­land com­pared what he de­scribed as iden­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments un­der the pro­posed arrange­ments to re­stric­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with apartheid in South Africa.

“We will not be mar­gin­alised and will not have peo­ple walk­ing around with a card as if we in Sowe­to. That is not go­ing to hap­pen,” he said.

Mar­celle said he was cu­ri­ous about the au­thor­i­ty of those who would lead op­er­a­tions in des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas, ar­gu­ing that the bill left im­por­tant safe­guards to their dis­cre­tion.

He al­so raised con­cern about the amount of pow­er now be­ing placed in the Prime Min­is­ter’s hands.

“Sec­tion 80 of our Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees that un­less the bill has spe­cif­ic words rel­a­tive to the Pres­i­dent ex­er­cis­ing her own dis­cre­tion, it is re­al­ly a rub­ber-stamp­ing ex­er­cise where it is the Cab­i­net of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Prime Min­is­ter, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the UNC can de­ter­mine when and where and how long a com­mu­ni­ty be­comes a closed area,” he stressed.

On body cam­eras, he said even hav­ing suf­fi­cient equip­ment would not nec­es­sar­i­ly guar­an­tee its use.

He linked that con­cern to the abil­i­ty of jour­nal­ists to in­de­pen­dent­ly scru­ti­nise op­er­a­tions, say­ing me­dia work­ers were not among those ex­press­ly ex­empt­ed from re­stric­tions in closed ar­eas.

Mar­celle ques­tioned why jour­nal­ists were not in­clud­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly when cur­fews and oth­er re­stric­tions could lim­it res­i­dents’ move­ments.

“Why does this Gov­ern­ment want to keep the me­dia out of closed zones when they are do­ing their op­er­a­tions and when cur­fews are in ef­fect?” he asked.

Al-Rawi, mean­while, said at­ten­tion must now turn to the Sen­ate, where he ar­gued that the out­come of the vote would have far-reach­ing con­se­quences.

“One vote alone is go­ing to af­fect what hap­pens, whether a po­lice state is born where the Prime Min­is­ter has un­holy pow­ers out­side of a state of emer­gency or not,” he said.

He con­tend­ed that the leg­is­la­tion re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty—three-fifths—be­cause of its con­sti­tu­tion­al im­pli­ca­tions.

In the Low­er House, it passed with a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty.

He al­so ob­ject­ed to the role he said the bill would give the Prime Min­is­ter in ini­ti­at­ing and re­vok­ing the arrange­ments.

“We in the PNM are so sure that this thing is fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed that at this point our con­cern is that it is with­drawn,” he said, call­ing for prop­er con­sul­ta­tion.