Emergency powers and public trust

As fate would have it, this column is being published the very day the government proposes to seek parliamentary approval for an extension of the current State of Emergency (SoE). This will apply for three months beyond its June 17 expiration.

A statement from the Office of the Attorney General last Sunday indicated that support for the decision derives in part from an impact assessment related to SoEs spanning the period December 2024 to May 2026.

This criss-crosses political administrations and, hopefully, the ensuing discussions will extend beyond the temptation to contrast and compare, with querulous, partisan points in mind.

Instead, it is to be hoped that an honest, thorough explanation of the manner in which such an intervention has been able, in the past and today, to satisfy all constitutional and good governance benchmarks and to meet valid objectives.

The AG, as a professor of law, would have more than once elaborated to his students the key pre-conditions set out under Sections 8-10 of the Constitution and all the important features that distinguish their extraordinary nature.

Section 8 contains the substantive grounds for declaring an SoE, while Sections 9 and 10 address duration and parliamentary oversight.

The public needs to understand the broad circumstances contemplated by the Constitution: war or imminent war; natural disaster, epidemic, or similar calamity; and serious threats to public safety or essential services – the latter being cited in this instance.

Recourse to an SoE generally unsettles people with a concern for the maintenance of human rights in all its facets, mainly but not solely through the stated rationale, and the framing and application of accompanying regulations. This is important since it focuses on the performance of official agencies entrusted with their enforcement.

Within that context, the role of state security agencies is deemed singularly important – the police service and military in particular.

The citizenry is fully entitled to closely scrutinise this feature of SoE implementation. And the issues to which people and their representative civic institutions should pay the greatest attention.

Sometimes it is difficult to maintain clear focus through the haze of partisanship and political sycophancy. But responsible broader community intervention should routinely occur to bring under sharp scrutiny some key attributes of police and other official behaviour.

As discussed in last week’s edition of this column, public trust is indispensable when it comes to state actions that impinge on civil liberties and require us to concede otherwise protected space.

It starts with pervasive confidence in the soundness of a decision to travel such a path. I cannot say this is either universal or completely immune from irrationality in either support or opposition. Whatever prevailing predispositions, there is a case to be respectfully and competently made.

There are several key actors in the management of public emergencies, and the executive is only one of them. Let’s focus on another principal player, the Police.

The Police of Trinidad and Tobago at work

I have not heard any arguments against the view that a comprehensive remodelling of the police service, as currently constituted, is absolutely required to bring it in line with modern realities and challenges, and consequently to render this agency of the state wholly trustworthy under an SoE.

The slothful path being taken to recognise the value of body cameras is a simple example. The prohibitive default posture when it comes to public dissent is another.

But there are wider, already acknowledged shortfalls on questions of criminal detection rates and, even further, eventual conviction within the framework of our criminal justice system.

As it is – and to cite just one issue - there is a more likely chance than not of a criminal getting away with murder. This is even when there are more sharply focused laws, harsher penalties, and even emergency powers to skip some elements of legal processes.

The experience of the latest round of SoE conditions appears to reinforce the point. Impunity remains the norm however rigid, even fatal, the application of regulations.

There is also a need for greater transparency and accountability by the TTPS, and the equipping and positioning of the Police Complaints Authority and other agencies to ensure this is achieved when things appear to go wrong.

Persistent concerns remain regarding corruption, poor professional standards, and the need to strengthen police-community relations.

None of these is irrelevant to how emergency powers are administered and accepted by law-abiding citizens.

Hopefully, some guidance will be provided in the House of Representatives today. It’s the least we should all expect.