A constitution and voices on pause

Last Saturday’s T&T Guardian provided a fair, well-informed synopsis of our experience with states of public emergency since 2011. It’s worth reading. Get a copy and keep it for future reference.

For some of us, lived experience reaches back more than 55 years though. For a few, it begins in 1937 amid labour unrest. If we take the time to consider the objective circumstances distinguishing each episode, we can begin to unravel both their intent and outcomes and assess their appropriateness … as is the current challenge of 2025.

Sadly, there’s been little from academia or the legal field stepping up to help us make empirical sense of it all - the history, contexts, and now all 12 pages of the 2025 Emergency Powers Regulations (EPR).

Believe me, I’ve been scanning news and social media pages since last Friday for independent, informed expert commentary. It’s been rough going.

That word again - “independent” - a status viewed with suspicion in these times of single-message partisanship and punished with derision and scorn.

Even the newspaper columns by “independent” voices we ought to hear have been disturbingly absent or distracted - perhaps (if I were to be mean) wary of gratuitous official disfavour or the withholding of reward.

So, it fell to journalists last Saturday to outline the basics and to stimulate dormant awareness. For those of us particularly attuned to human rights issues, and justifiably disturbed whenever they arise, there’s also the recognition of deeper psychosocial consequences that transcend politics and ideology.

Because emergency powers are not experienced equally, not all of us felt touched by the turmoil of 1970. For many, it “had nothing to do with us … we not in that.”

Same for 1990. I remember radio callers wondering why there was such national alarm about something “only happening up north.” One person asked about a pizza competition; others chose peaceful slumber while the country was under siege - a mere “family quarrel” for some.

Then came 2011 and 2021 - differing in both intent and effect. The latter aligned more closely with Section 8(b) of the Constitution - “pestilence or (of) infectious disease.” The former far more tenuously linked to 8(c) involving “public safety.”

Had those with the skills and time occupied the crease, they might by now have provided useful comparative analyses of the 2011 and 2021 regulations versus the 2024 EPR - whose tone chillingly echoed 2011 and set off alarm bells for the rights-conscious among us.

As someone invested in freedom of expression, I note that even in the absence of explicit curfews, bans on assembly, or free movement, such prohibitions can be easily imposed.

For example, EPR 12(a) allows for the seizure and interrogation of computers and electronic devices – through state-sanctioned “home invasions.” And if, by some stretch, this very column is deemed able to “influence public opinion in a manner prejudicial to public safety” (EPR 11), I could find myself in trouble that ordinary law does not routinely cover – as target of a regulatory “drive by.”

This isn’t all theoretical. We had objected to such broad surveillance powers when the Data Protection Act was being shaped. And yes, we still retain seditious communication provisions under the Sedition Act. See where I’m going?

None of this suggests that we don’t face serious threats from organised or random criminal violence. Or that plots of all kinds don’t exist. The Police Commissioner does not appear to readily engage in fiction. But I thought that was why legislation has become increasingly draconian over the years – for the PC and his charges to go after the culprits.

We have Anti-Gang legislation, an Anti-Terrorism Act, a vast suite of criminal law, and ongoing security operations - all presumably capable of disrupting prison-based criminal conspiracies, detecting and dealing with planned political assassinations, intercepting illegal arms, and even preventing missile-launcher threats on government buildings.

But even these measures come with their own baggage: concerns about due process, excessive penalties, and infringements on property rights, mobility, and speech.

That’s why people have questioned the justification for the emergency measures in 2011, 2024, and 2025. For some, this applied to 1970, 1990, and 2021, which many such as I saw as far more consistent with constitutional intentions.

One major challenge in unpacking all this is the uneven impact on different communities and interests - and how perspectives shift depending on political alignment. Some find nothing wrong with 2025 but objected to 2024. Others who opposed 1970 are now cheering on 2025.

People without even one cocoa bean in either a rising or setting sun might be few and far between, but we don’t seem to be hearing their voices in the present din.