00:00Former Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has weighed in on the public debate regarding the bill for zones of special operations, which the government hopes to use when the state of emergency ends in Trinidad and Tobago on January 31st.
00:15On his Facebook page, Dr. Rowley, who is also a former chairman of the National Security Council, said, quote,
00:45The Prime Minister said on her social media pages that it is astonishing how the PNM and pseudo-independent groups have suddenly discovered a manufactured sense of humanity to defend criminals and gangsters.
00:58The Prime Minister has also recently described independent senators as not being independent, as she said they were appointed by the president who once served in a former PNM-led government.
01:10Dr. Rowley, a former leader of the PNM, said that if he had said anything nearly as, in his words, as offensive and arrogant as what Prime Minister Passat-Basessa recently said,
01:23everyone in this country would have known not to accept that from the Prime Minister.
01:28Dr. Rowley further said it confirms to him that he was held to a higher standard and that he is satisfied he met those standards.
01:36The former Prime Minister further said, quote,
01:39These arguments to justify their dangerous legislation to be promulgated in this uneasy, multiracial, multiethnic society is not an appropriate crime-fighting tool, end quote.
01:51The bill stipulates that a cordon in a zone of special operations shall endure for a period not exceeding 24 hours and the curfew shall endure for a period not exceeding 72 hours and that whenever a cordon is established or a curfew is imposed,
02:07any member of the Joint Force may, for the purpose of enforcing such cordon or curfew, exercise such powers as are vested in a constable.
02:14The government has sought to assure citizens that there are safeguards in the bill to protect law-abiding citizens in any areas designated zones of special operations once the government gets the required support of independent senators in the Senate.
02:29Dr. Rowley said that, given the divisive politics and the suspicious nature of so many,
02:34it may very well turn out that the justification of fighting crime might not be enough to manage what he predicted to be the fallout when the law is applied.
02:43Dr. Rowley declared the unsupervised authority will breed abuse and resentment and all that follows.
02:51The debate of the bill for the zones of operations, which requires a three-fifths majority, resumes in the Senate on Friday.
02:59Jewel Brown, TV6 News.
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