Warner: A country cannot thrive under SoEs indefinitely

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Dr Jack Warn­er is warn­ing that while a State of Emer­gency may help a coun­try sur­vive pe­ri­ods of cri­sis, so­ci­eties can­not thrive in­def­i­nite­ly un­der emer­gency rule.

Warn­er made the com­ment yes­ter­day in a lengthy com­men­tary ti­tled When Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Be­come Prophets, as he re­flect­ed on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s so­cial and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and ques­tioned the long-term im­pli­ca­tions of gov­ern­ing through ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures.

His com­ments come as the Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to Par­lia­ment to­mor­row seek­ing ap­proval to ex­tend the cur­rent State of Emer­gency by a fur­ther three months. The ex­ten­sion re­quires on­ly a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote, which the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion com­mands.

Ad­dress­ing the de­bate sur­round­ing the emer­gency mea­sures, Warn­er ac­knowl­edged there are dif­fer­ing views on the is­sue but ar­gued that the im­pact of a SoE ex­tends be­yond its le­gal frame­work.

“Sup­port­ers say ex­tra­or­di­nary crime de­mands ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures. Crit­ics wor­ry about civ­il lib­er­ties and whether emer­gency pow­ers can solve the roots of crim­i­nal­i­ty,” Warn­er wrote.

“Rea­son­able peo­ple can dis­agree. But no one should pre­tend that a State of Emer­gency is on­ly law. It is al­so a psy­cho­log­i­cal mes­sage that tells cit­i­zens nor­mal gov­er­nance is no longer enough.”

He added, “A coun­try may sur­vive un­der emer­gency con­di­tions. It can­not thrive un­der them in­def­i­nite­ly.”

Draw­ing par­al­lels with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry, Warn­er re­called the Ju­ly 27, 1990 at­tempt­ed coup by the Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen, de­scrib­ing it as more than an act of vi­o­lence against the State.

“The at­tempt­ed coup was not on­ly vi­o­lence against the State. It was al­so the erup­tion of ten­sions that had been gath­er­ing for years. Ex­clu­sion, hard­ship, frus­tra­tion, alien­ation and a widen­ing dis­tance be­tween cit­i­zens and in­sti­tu­tions,” he said.

While stress­ing that his­to­ry was not re­peat­ing it­self, Warn­er cau­tioned that so­ci­eties of­ten drift in­to cri­sis grad­u­al­ly by ig­nor­ing warn­ing signs.

“I am not say­ing his­to­ry is re­peat­ing it­self to­day, for his­to­ry rarely re­peats neat­ly. But it does rhyme,” he wrote.

The for­mer min­is­ter ar­gued that many cit­i­zens have grown weary of crime, eco­nom­ic pres­sures and what he de­scribed as de­clin­ing con­fi­dence in pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions.

“Peo­ple are tired of promis­es, tem­po­rary so­lu­tions, and press con­fer­ences that sound firm but leave life un­changed,” he said.

He al­so ref­er­enced the re­cent death of 12-year-old Mer­cedez Layne, say­ing the tragedy had again forced the na­tion to con­front deep­er ques­tions about the pro­tec­tion and fu­ture of its chil­dren.

Re­flect­ing on the role of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans as so­cial com­men­ta­tors, he cit­ed songs such as Miss­ing Gen­er­a­tion by El­la An­dall and How Many More Must Die by Mighty Duke, sug­gest­ing their mes­sages re­main rel­e­vant to­day.

“A miss­ing gen­er­a­tion is not on­ly one that dis­ap­pears phys­i­cal­ly. It can al­so be a gen­er­a­tion that los­es hope, los­es di­rec­tion, los­es faith that ed­u­ca­tion will bring op­por­tu­ni­ty, or qui­et­ly con­cludes that its fu­ture lies else­where,” Warn­er said.

He con­clud­ed by urg­ing cit­i­zens and lead­ers alike to pay at­ten­tion to the warn­ings long em­bed­ded in ca­lyp­so mu­sic.

“The ques­tion now is not whether the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans were right. The ques­tion is whether, af­ter all these years, we are fi­nal­ly pre­pared to hear them,” Warn­er said.