A political fight erupted after the Belmont killings, as Misryoum reports debate intensifies over whether ZOSO could have prevented the tragedy.
DA-REECE PO-LO Se-nior Re-porter da-reece.po-[email protected] The Op-po-si-tion has re-ject-ed claims that Zones of Spe-cial Op-er-a-tions (ZOSO) leg-is-la-tion could have pre-vent-ed the Bel-mont triple mur-der that left a tod-dler dead, even as the Gov-ern-ment de-fends the ef-fec-tive-ness of the on-go-ing State of Emer-gency (SOE) and con-tin-ues to pro-mote ZOSO as part of its wider crime strat-e-gy.. The po-lit-i-cal clash comes in the af-ter-math of Thurs-day’s shoot-ing in Bel-mont that claimed the lives of 23-month-old Aki-ni
Kafi, his 30-year-old fa-ther Aquil Kafi and fam-i-ly friend An-tho-ny Wil-son, 28.. The child’s moth-er, 36-year-old An-to-nia Cain-Kafi, re-mains hos-pi-talised in crit-i-cal con-di-tion.. The in-ci-dent, which was yes-ter-day linked to a quadru-ple mur-der along the La-dy Young Road, Mor-vant, last month by De-fence Min-is-ter Wayne Sturge, has since in-ten-si-fied scruti-ny of the Gov-ern-ment’s crime strat-e-gy.. Po-lice sta-tis-tics show a slight de-cline in killings un-der the SoE, with 130 mur-ders record-ed so far this year com-pared
to 136 over the same pe-ri-od last year.. But that mar-gin-al re-duc-tion is be-ing over-shad-owed by a re-cent surge in high-pro-file vi-o-lent at-tacks.. Based on da-ta sent last evening, there have been 10 mur-ders so far this month com-pared to five for the com-par-a-tive pe-ri-od last year.. Still, the Gov-ern-ment yes-ter-day main-tained that the emer-gency mea-sures are de-liv-er-ing re-sults.. “Of course, the State of Emer-gency is work-ing.. The amount of mur-ders have de-creased.. I know
there are in-stances re-cent-ly, es-pe-cial-ly yes-ter-day (Thurs-day), but it doesn’t mean that the state of emer-gency is not work-ing,” Jus-tice Min-is-ter De-vesh Ma-haraj said on his way to yes-ter-day’s sit-ting of Par-lia-ment.. Home-land Se-cu-ri-ty Min-is-ter Roger Alexan-der, when asked about whether Gov-ern-ment was con-sid-er-ing cur-few as he ar-rived out-side Par-lia-ment, dis-missed the idea of ad-di-tion-al re-stric-tions.. “No, no.. The peo-ple of Laven-tille didn’t want any ZOSO through their min-is-ter (MP), not so?” he quipped.. But
At-tor-ney Gen-er-al John Je-re-mie of-fered no pub-lic de-fence of the SoE when ques-tioned about whether ad-di-tion-al mea-sures such as a cur-few were be-ing con-sid-ered, or whether he be-lieves the SoE is ef-fec-tive.. As pres-sure mounts, how-ev-er, the Op-po-si-tion has de-scribed the Gov-ern-ment’s ap-proach as a fail-ure.. “This State of Emer-gency is a waste of time.. It is an egre-gious tres-pass on the con-sti-tu-tion-al rights of the cit-i-zens of Trinidad and To-ba-go.. It has had ab-solute-ly
no ef-fect and the Prime Min-is-ter should im-me-di-ate-ly bring an end to this SoE cha-rade be-cause it is not work-ing,” Op-po-si-tion chief whip Mar-vin Gon-za-les said out-side the House.. For-mer na-tion-al se-cu-ri-ty min-is-ter Stu-art Young al-so weighed in, say-ing the SoE has failed de-spite be-ing the strongest le-gal tool avail-able to the State.. “We are in a State of Emer-gency.. Un-der the Con-sti-tu-tion, there is noth-ing worse that can be done to sus-pend our con-sti-tu-tion-al
rights than a state of emer-gency.. So, if we’re liv-ing un-der a state of emer-gency, and it’s not work-ing, and we’re see-ing these sort of mass shoot-ings, and you look at the num-ber of shells af-ter-wards—over 30.. Some-thing is se-ri-ous-ly wrong.. And it’s not about car-ry-ing on the way we are,” said Young.. While de-bate over the SoE con-tin-ues, at-ten-tion has again shift-ed to ZOSOs, with one Gov-ern-ment min-is-ter fac-ing crit-i-cism over claims it could
have pre-vent-ed the Bel-mont killings.. Min-is-ter in the Hous-ing Min-istry Phillip Ed-ward Alexan-der has been at the cen-tre of con-tro-ver-sy, af-ter sug-gest-ing on so-cial me-dia that a ZOSO pres-ence in Bel-mont could have saved the child.. Alexan-der took to Face-book on Thurs-day to share, “That two-year-old would be alive right now if Bel-mont was un-der a ZOSO and in the con-trol of law en-force-ment and the army with So-cial De-vel-op-ment rein-vent-ing lives to pros-per-i-ty and
peace.” He al-so wrote: “Gun-men, gangs and gov-ern-ment cor-rup-tion, drug em-pires us-ing aban-doned hu-man cap-i-tal as their hu-man re-source, the PNM can-cer in Bel-mont has metas-ta-sised to the bone.. “A ZOSO in Bel-mont would have trans-formed that com-mu-ni-ty back to func-tion-al but would have robbed the drug lords fi-nanc-ing the PNM of their cheap ex-pend-able labour.” De-fend-ing his com-ments yes-ter-day out-side the Par-lia-ment, Alexan-der said the coun-try as a whole must ac-cept re-spon-si-bil-i-ty for the
vi-o-lence.. “We failed that lit-tle two-year-old child, you know.. We as a na-tion failed.. But we can’t con-tin-ue to push this un-der the rug and pre-tend that it is okay to say, ‘don’t politi-cise crime’.. “Every sin-gle elec-tion that has been fought in the last 20 years were fought on crime.. We can’t es-cape the fact that crime is the num-ber one is-sue af-fect-ing the peo-ple of Trinidad and To-ba-go,” Alexan-der said.. But Laven-tille West
MP Ka-reem Mar-celle strong-ly re-ject-ed the ar-gu-ment.. “He’s (Phillip Alexan-der) so dunce that he does not even un-der-stand what is in the bill.. Cause clear-ly, any-one who un-der-stands what was in the pro-posed ZOSO would tell you that the State of Emer-gency gives much more ex-pan-sive pow-ers to the State.” Mar-celle al-so crit-i-cised the Gov-ern-ment for fail-ing to pub-licly dis-tance it-self from the re-marks.. “It is very un-for-tu-nate that if it is, in fact, not
the view of the Ho-n-ourable Prime Min-is-ter and her Gov-ern-ment, that they have not dis-tanced them-selves from these very un-for-tu-nate, dis-gust-ing and in-sen-si-tive re-marks made.” Mean-while, Young al-so pushed back on the ZOSO ar-gu-ment, say-ing its pow-ers are, in fact, more lim-it-ed than an SoE, mak-ing the com-par-i-son flawed.. He sug-gest-ed that if amend-ments are be-ing con-sid-ered, a Joint Se-lect Com-mit-tee should be es-tab-lished to al-low struc-tured dis-cus-sion be-tween Gov-ern-ment, Op-po-si-tion and In-de-pen-dent voic-es.. Young
al-so ques-tioned why pre-vi-ous-ly dis-man-tled youth de-vel-op-ment pro-grammes could not be re-stored im-me-di-ate-ly to sup-port vul-ner-a-ble com-mu-ni-ties, ar-gu-ing that such in-ter-ven-tions should op-er-ate in-de-pen-dent-ly of emer-gency leg-is-la-tion.. He fur-ther called for ac-count-abil-i-ty at the high-est lev-el, in-sist-ing that the Min-is-ters of Home-land Se-cu-ri-ty and De-fence should re-sign, and warned that con-tin-ued re-liance on emer-gency pow-ers with-out re-sults shows that “some-thing is se-ri-ous-ly wrong.” For-mer na-tion-al se-cu-ri-ty min-is-ter and po-lice com-mis-sion-er Gary Grif-fith al-so took to
so-cial me-dia yes-ter-day to chal-lenge the Gov-ern-ment on its be-lief that ZOSOs were more pow-er-ful than an SoE.. In a re-sponse, Grif-fith said, “To state that dur-ing a State of Emer-gency, if ZOSO was ap-proved, that it could have pre-vent-ed re-cent mur-ders, is as ridicu-lous a state-ment as you can get.. A ZOSO is a vir-tu-al sub-set of a State of Emer-gency (SoE).. It pro-vides the same ex-tra law en-force-ment pow-ers and re-moval of con-sti-tu-tion-al
rights, that you get in a SoE, but on-ly in spe-cif-ic ar-eas.. “In oth-er words, a SoE al-lows for a na-tion-wide ZOSO.. If you have a State of Emer-gency, then there is noth-ing stop-ping you from tar-get-ing spe-cif-ic ar-eas to es-tab-lish Zones of Spe-cial Op-er-a-tions.. In-stead of fin-ger-point-ing and play-ing the blame game, just fo-cus on the mis-sion please.”