Tobago MPs back SoE extension as Thomas says TPP is part of Government

To­ba­go East MP David Thomas has de­clared that To­ba­go’s par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives are ful­ly be­hind the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), de­scrib­ing them­selves as part of the ad­min­is­tra­tion and ar­gu­ing that emer­gency pow­ers re­main nec­es­sary to bring crime un­der con­trol.

Con­tribut­ing to de­bate on the mo­tion to ex­tend the SoE for a fur­ther three months, Thomas re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions from Op­po­si­tion MPs that To­ba­go’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives should op­pose the mea­sure, in­sist­ing that both To­ba­go MPs sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to tack­ling crime.

“I speak on be­half of my con­stituen­cy and all of To­ba­go, in­clud­ing my col­league. We sup­port the SOE,” Thomas told Par­lia­ment.

Mak­ing clear that the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) re­mains aligned with the ad­min­is­tra­tion, Thomas said To­ba­go’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives viewed them­selves as part of the Gov­ern­ment and had no hes­i­ta­tion sup­port­ing the ex­ten­sion.

“The fact of the mat­ter is To­ba­go and the per­sons that are rep­re­sent­ing To­ba­go ful­ly sup­port this SOE and we need to make that em­phat­i­cal­ly clear,” he said.

“As far as we are con­cerned, we are a part of the gov­ern­ment.”

The state­ment is like­ly to add to on­go­ing po­lit­i­cal de­bate about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the TPP and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion, with Op­po­si­tion fig­ures fre­quent­ly de­scrib­ing the To­ba­go-based par­ty as a po­lit­i­cal al­ly of the Gov­ern­ment.

Thomas de­fend­ed the use of emer­gency pow­ers, ar­gu­ing that they were pro­vid­ing law en­force­ment with valu­able time and space to im­ple­ment mea­sures aimed at re­duc­ing crime.

“We un­der­stand the ben­e­fits, we un­der­stand that is not the ul­ti­mate, but it gives us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to plan, ex­e­cute and make the lives of cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go safer day af­ter day,” he said.

He main­tained that crit­ics were wrong to por­tray the SoE as an at­tack on con­sti­tu­tion­al free­doms, in­sist­ing that cit­i­zens had not lost any rights or free­doms since the mea­sures were in­tro­duced.

“Noth­ing that I en­joyed pri­or to the SOE have I lost. Noth­ing,” Thomas said.

Point­ing to To­ba­go’s busy events cal­en­dar, Thomas ar­gued that pub­lic ac­tiv­i­ties had con­tin­ued un­hin­dered through­out the emer­gency pe­ri­od.

“We had an SOE in To­ba­go, all the func­tions were over­whelmed, they would jump up,” he said, sug­gest­ing that at­ten­dance at events demon­strat­ed that peo­ple’s move­ments were not be­ing re­strict­ed in the man­ner claimed by op­po­nents of the ex­ten­sion.

The To­ba­go East MP al­so used his con­tri­bu­tion to crit­i­cise the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, ar­gu­ing that crime wors­ened sig­nif­i­cant­ly dur­ing its decade in of­fice.

“I have lived in this coun­try all my life and that pe­ri­od be­tween 2015 and 2025, I have seen a to­tal es­ca­la­tion. Crime be­came out of hand,” he said.

Thomas not­ed that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had it­self re­sort­ed to a State of Emer­gency and ques­tioned why Op­po­si­tion MPs were now con­demn­ing a mea­sure they once em­ployed.

Ac­cord­ing to Thomas, avail­able da­ta showed en­cour­ag­ing signs that the cur­rent an­ti-crime strat­e­gy was work­ing, al­though he ac­knowl­edged that emer­gency pow­ers alone could not solve the coun­try’s crime chal­lenges.

He said the ex­ten­sion was nec­es­sary to al­low au­thor­i­ties ad­di­tion­al time to build on the progress al­ready made.

“This SOE, as far as I’m con­cerned, and as far as my leader in­di­cat­ed, we are in full sup­port,” Thomas said.

“We have the in­for­ma­tion and the da­ta nec­es­sary to cause us to lend full sup­port to this SOE.