Young: Special Operations Bill could create a ‘police state’

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill to sup­press con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, warn­ing that the leg­is­la­tion could turn Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to what he de­scribed as a “po­lice State.”

Young made the claims dur­ing yes­ter­day’s de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as the Gov­ern­ment de­fend­ed leg­is­la­tion that would es­tab­lish sev­en polic­ing dis­tricts, six in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go, and pro­vide a le­gal frame­work for spe­cial op­er­a­tions in­volv­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and, where nec­es­sary, the De­fence Force.

Crit­i­cis­ing the pace at which the bill was brought be­fore Par­lia­ment, Young de­scribed it as a “hus­tled de­bate,” say­ing MPs had been giv­en less than 48 hours to con­sid­er what he char­ac­terised as far-reach­ing leg­is­la­tion.

He said the Op­po­si­tion would not sup­port leg­is­la­tion it con­sid­ers un­con­sti­tu­tion­al or de­signed to sup­press cit­i­zens’ rights.

“This piece of leg­is­la­tion is dan­ger­ous,” Young said.

“The UNC is pass­ing leg­is­la­tion here to­day that makes Trinidad and To­ba­go noth­ing less than a po­lice state, with a tram­pling of the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of all cit­i­zens, not just those who en­gage in crim­i­nal­i­ty.”

Re­ject­ing ar­gu­ments that law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have noth­ing to fear from the bill, he called that as­ser­tion “com­plete rub­bish.”

Young linked his con­cerns to the re­cent State of Emer­gency, ref­er­enc­ing the use of Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), un­der which in­di­vid­u­als were de­tained with­out be­ing charged.

“This bill is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and it is fur­ther con­fir­ma­tion of the gal­lop­ing dic­ta­tor­ship that has be­fall­en T&T,” he said.

“The PDO sta­tis­tics bear that out. Over 800 ap­plied for, over 700 grant­ed, over 500, al­most 600 ex­e­cut­ed. So 600 per­sons de­tained. How many charged out of that 500? Just over 200. So what hap­pened to the oth­er 300? In­no­cent cit­i­zens? If they’re not in­no­cent, why didn’t you charge them?”

Young ar­gued that the leg­is­la­tion raised se­ri­ous con­cerns about con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing prop­er­ty rights and the process by which cit­i­zens could be de­prived of cer­tain free­doms. He fo­cused on pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing closed ar­eas, con­tend­ing that res­i­dents and oth­ers en­ter­ing or leav­ing such zones could be re­quired to ob­tain per­mits.

“This bill, and that im­po­si­tion of a per­mit sys­tem in closed ar­eas for every­one who re­sides in or has to en­ter or leave a closed area, is noth­ing short of what un­for­tu­nate­ly is part of this world’s his­to­ry in South Africa un­der apartheid. This bill mir­rors that,” he said.

Young main­tained that the re­stric­tions would pri­mar­i­ly af­fect law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, as crim­i­nals could sim­ply re­lo­cate their ac­tiv­i­ties else­where.

“The crim­i­nal el­e­ment will just pick up and move. The one per cent will leave the closed area. No crim­i­nal is go­ing to stay there and say, ‘Well, I am go­ing to op­er­ate in a cor­doned-off area.’ That’s UNC log­ic. It doesn’t op­er­ate that way. It is the law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, it is your rights they are tram­pling on.”

He al­so chal­lenged the role of the Pres­i­dent un­der the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, ar­gu­ing that Cab­i­net would ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine when an area is des­ig­nat­ed a closed area.

“Don’t be fooled that the Pres­i­dent has any role to play in this apart from a rub­ber stamp. It is the Cab­i­net of Trinidad and To­ba­go that is de­cid­ing every­thing with re­spect to this bill. So it is the Gov­ern­ment that is de­cid­ing every­thing.”

In sup­port of his ar­gu­ment, Young cit­ed Sec­tion 80(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which gen­er­al­ly pro­vides that the Pres­i­dent acts in ac­cor­dance with the ad­vice of Cab­i­net or a min­is­ter act­ing un­der Cab­i­net’s au­thor­i­ty, ex­cept where the Con­sti­tu­tion or law pro­vides oth­er­wise. He said the Gov­ern­ment should not seek to shield it­self be­hind the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.

“They don’t have the guts to face the pop­u­la­tion and say, ‘Aye, is we the Gov­ern­ment, is we the Cab­i­net who’s go­ing to de­cide what is a closed area.’ They’re try­ing to hide be­hind a Pres­i­dent. It is not the Pres­i­dent who de­cides. The Pres­i­dent has no say what­so­ev­er, and the courts know that. So that is not a safe­guard.”

Young fur­ther warned that cit­i­zens were be­com­ing de­sen­si­tised to de­bates about con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and that de­mo­c­ra­t­ic safe­guards were be­ing steadi­ly erod­ed.

“I fear that the pop­u­la­tion of T&T is be­com­ing so numb to the words ‘con­sti­tu­tion­al’ and ‘con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty’ and their fun­da­men­tal rights be­ing sup­pressed that they’re al­low­ing the dic­ta­tor­ship to grow and to gal­lop. It is not creep­ing. We are in a dic­ta­tor­ship. That is clear.”

He al­so re­ferred to re­cent court de­ci­sions in Be­lize and Ja­maica, sug­gest­ing those rul­ings could be­come rel­e­vant if the leg­is­la­tion is chal­lenged be­fore the courts.

Mooni­lal re­jects claims

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Dr Roodal Mooni­lal re­ject­ed Young’s char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the bill, ac­cus­ing him of fear­mon­ger­ing and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing the pub­lic.

Mooni­lal dis­missed the Op­po­si­tion’s con­cerns about how cit­i­zens would be in­formed when ar­eas are de­clared closed, de­scrib­ing them as “fu­tile and ir­rel­e­vant.”

“The mem­ber is wil­ful­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing the pop­u­la­tion,” he said.

He stressed that a closed area would not nec­es­sar­i­ly en­com­pass an en­tire polic­ing dis­trict, not­ing that the leg­is­la­tion al­lows for small­er zones to be des­ig­nat­ed based on in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by law en­force­ment.

“A closed area could be a few streets, a closed area could be one street, a closed area could be his house. A closed area is any area with­in a dis­trict,” Mooni­lal said.

He ex­plained that po­lice would use in­tel­li­gence to iden­ti­fy lo­ca­tions where se­ri­ous crim­i­nal threats ex­ist rather than au­to­mat­i­cal­ly plac­ing an en­tire dis­trict un­der re­stric­tions.

Mooni­lal al­so re­ject­ed con­cerns that the leg­is­la­tion could lead to a na­tion­wide cur­few or the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of so­ci­ety.

“The is­sue of mil­i­taris­ing so­ci­ety doesn’t stand here. The mil­i­tary is help­ing the po­lice. They have re­sources, man­pow­er and equip­ment. They are help­ing and work­ing with the po­lice un­der a statu­to­ry frame­work for the first time, I think,” he said.

He main­tained that the in­volve­ment of De­fence Force per­son­nel along­side po­lice of­fi­cers did not mean se­cu­ri­ty forces would op­er­ate out­side the law.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that crim­i­nals may move from one area to an­oth­er, Mooni­lal ar­gued that this did not un­der­mine the ef­fec­tive­ness of the pro­posed mea­sures. He al­so dis­missed con­cerns that the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to cir­cum­vent par­lia­men­tary over­sight, not­ing that le­gal mech­a­nisms re­mained avail­able to chal­lenge any dis­put­ed ac­tions.

“You can file any­time. There are in­stru­ments avail­able in op­po­si­tion to that,” he said.