Dear Editor,
Listening to Stuart Young spend most of the press conference decrying and criticising the Limited State of Emergency in 2011 and talking about how such a thing is illegal, it would appear that he either does not know or chooses to forget when the PNM under Patrick Manning used such a tool in August 1995 to force the Speaker of the House, Occah Seepaul, out of office. By the interpretation now being offered by the acting Attorney General, it would appear that the State of Emergency instruments used to confine Ms. Seepaul to her residence should have been applied to the entire nation, and not just have been limited to #9 Mary Street, St. Clair.
It is clear however that the verbiage being used in this press conference is meant to hide the hypocrisy of the current administration having to resort to the use of the State of Emergency, something which they have criticized past governments for doing, but now find themselves in an exhaustive predicament wherein all of their past endeavours to curb the crime element has been for nought.
While I am certain that the government might have wanted to introduce a full State of Emergency, which also restricted movement and included a curfew, however, it is interesting to see them prioritize the Carnival season, which had been already cancelled in 2021 and 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Attorney General made it abundantly clear that as we head into the Carnival season, these stricter measures will not affect the daily lives and partying culture of the season, thereby guaranteeing the population that Carnival 2025 will take place as scheduled.
And I say all of this to contextualize the priorities of the PNM in implementing this State of Emergency mere months prior to a general election, as such a declaration can be taken as an admission of failure to address crime under normal circumstances. A State of Emergency under these conditions informs both the general public and the criminal element that the police service under this administration is simply ill-equipped and ill-managed to achieve the goals set upon them, and as such, civil liberties now have to be suspended in order to get the upper hand on criminals.
In the press conference, the justification being hammered is that these measures are necessary to protect citizens from the retaliation of criminal gangs in their ongoing war, but this comes after SIX HUNDRED persons have already lost their lives to violent crime this year alone, so why was the government not eager to protect any of those victims? Because what it appears to be is that as we are heading into a new year where the death count will be reset to 0 on January 1st, the government is looking for any means necessary to artificially suppress the murder rate in their final months in office so as to appear a little more presentable to an electorate as they head into the polling booth.
While all of this is taking place however, the Acting Attorney General and the Minister of National Security host a press conference to explain nothing, except to try to explain why none of this is their fault and why they shouldn’t be considered to be either incompetent or hypocrites for this situation that they have led the nation into.
Based on the timeframe given by Mr. Young, it appears that depending on the effect that this SoE has on crime in the short term, this accommodation might, in fact, be kept in place until the general election is due next year, which will be the second time in a row that such circumstances have existed, following 2020. What we must now observe and hope does not occur, is for the government to use this as a tool to target political opponents on the verge of what is shaping up to be an electoral defeat for their administration.
Best regards,
Ravi Balgobin Maharaj
