Opposition Leader blasts Kamla over new SoE

'UNC Govt has no crime plan'

Opposition People's National Movement (PNM) leader Penny Beckles says there is no crime plan by the Kamla Persad-Bissessar Government.Beckles says the declaration of yet another State of Emergency by Persad-Bissessar has confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that the UNC Government has completely failed in its ability to address crime in any meaningful ways."... And that (Government) intends to erode the rights of law-abiding citizens and to govern the nation under a permanent SoE," she added, calling on the Prime Minister to address citizens today.In a Facebook statement prior to a 10 am media conference by the PNM, Beckles added, "This second SoE in under a year proves the Government has no crime plan, only excuses and authoritarian overreach. T&T deserves real solutions, not rule by emergency. Either the Government shapes up or ships out immediately."

She added, "This Government continues to embarrass itself and has become a regional and global laughingstock. It is clear that Kamla Persad-Bissessar has forgotten her words when the 2024 State of Emergency was declared, where she said, 'This State of Emergency is a shameless political gimmick… Let us be clear: this government has no real plan to tackle crime.' She has once again found herself presiding over and enabling chaos with absolutely no plan, despite promising the world in the 2025 general election.

"This Government has demonstrated time and again that it prefers authoritarian measures over sound, strategic crime management, and once again, it has chosen to restrict the freedoms of citizens rather than address the systemic problems of crime."Beckles also predicted that this second SoE would follow the path of the first

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 (PNM) leader Penny Beckles says there is no crime plan by the Kamla Persad-Bissessar Government.

So over the past decade, what was the PNM plan, Penny? Explain, over 5,000 murders, was that your plan?

Beckles says the declaration of yet another State of Emergency by Persad-Bissessar has confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that the UNC Government has completely failed in its ability to address crime in any meaningful ways."...

Did the PNM not have an SOE? So the PNM was a failure?

T&T deserves real solutions, not rule by emergency. Either the Government shapes up or ships out immediately."

Your PNM had no solution for the crime rate in T&T:

4th murders per capita

6th in crime per capita.

Penny, did you notice the % of both of the above lately...they have dropped.

Why didn't you support ZOSO? Oh, it would have been administered in PNM voter strongholds...huh?

This is what your party hatched for a decade, as your PNM lacked leadership.

Keep doing as Rowley did for 10 years; blame the UNC. You are expecting such radical changes after 10 months at the helm.

I can quote Hinds, but that's a waste of time. Ironically, you seem to be lacking the same thing he did.

Penny has zero thoughts!

@BeatDball

A quick look at the political opposition in Trinidad and Tobago shows a slate of recycled figures and stale ideas, people the electorate has already weighed and rejected. Yet, despite that verdict, they continue to behave as if public trust is owed to them by default.

For the last decade especially, the PNM has leaned heavily on a blame-first strategy, using the UNC as a convenient shield for problems that have festered for generations, including under long stretches of PNM rule. It’s hard to take lectures about governance seriously from a party that has spent so much time in office while so many communities remain trapped in the same conditions year after year.

And the reality is uncomfortable: many of the areas most associated with persistent crime and social breakdown are also long-standing PNM strongholds, Belmont, Sea Lots, Laventille, Beetham Gardens, and La Brea among them. These communities have endured chronic underdevelopment, inadequate services, and limited economic opportunity dating back to the Eric Williams era. Sixty-plus years later, too many residents are still being asked to survive on the margins while being treated as political dependents, valuable at election time and neglected the rest of the year. If the PNM has held power for the better part of five decades, then it cannot keep dodging responsibility for the outcomes in the very constituencies it claims as its base.

The same applies to economic power. Under Eric Williams, certain minority merchant groups, often cited as Syrian and Lebanese families, were able to access opportunities and protections that many Afro-Trinidadians did not receive on equal terms. Whatever the origin story, the result today is a highly concentrated economy, where a small segment holds disproportionate influence. That imbalance didn’t appear overnight, and it cannot be discussed honestly without acknowledging the policy choices and patronage networks that helped shape it.

What makes the PNM’s current posture even less credible is its recent period of drift, months of internal uncertainty and weak direction, followed by loud criticism of problems it had a direct hand in creating or entrenching. It’s one thing to scrutinize a sitting government; it’s another to pretend you weren’t part of the setup.

If the opposition wants to be taken seriously, it needs more than outrage and revisionist history. It needs to explain why so many long-neglected communities remained shunned under its watch and why the country should believe that the same political machinery, rebranded, will deliver different results this time.

Sarge

@sgtdjones

Perfectly put Sgt! 3 cheers. 👏

@sgtdjones

Didn't all the PMM senators [including all appointed by the PNM Prez] vote against the plan?

Is Garry Sobers or Faris Wheel writing dem speech for lameduck Miss Universe Penny?😀

Beckles is closer to TT politricks than I am

she ALSO says there is no crime plan

as Kamla said when the PNM did this with SOE and crime reduction non plans

so not only is Kamla deceitful and a liar, she has resorted to a type of desperation that one uses the failed plans of their enemies because they have no plans of their own

drink ah ponce a crema

@Narper

Narps....

The charge that the government “has no plan” is more slogan than substance, especially when you trace what actually happened and who did what.

First, the moral high-ground routine doesn’t survive contact with the record. Kamla Persad-Bissessar criticized states of emergency while in opposition. But when the UNC formed a government, they imposed an SOE anyway and kept it in place until it expired while they explored other options.

Second, pretending a new administration can conjure major crime legislation overnight is either naïve or dishonest. Drafting, consulting, and passing security laws takes time, especially if the aim is something more targeted than blanket emergency powers. That’s why, as the SOE came to an end, the government moved the ZOSO framework to Parliament: a structured tool meant to address hotspots without keeping the whole country under emergency rules.

And the timing matters; when key gang figures were released, murders rose again. That’s not a talking point; it’s exactly the scenario ZOSO was designed to confront.

Third, the opposition’s posture looked less like principle and more like calculation. Once it became clear ZOSO would be applied in communities widely seen as their political strongholds, support evaporated. In other words, the policy was acceptable in theory until it became real in places that could hurt them politically.

Then it went to the Senate, where the so-called “independents” (appointed under an opposition-aligned presidency) helped sink it. The result wasn’t “bad drafting” alone; it was a deliberate chokehold on a tool meant to curb violence.

And let’s be honest about the selective memory here. The PNM’s decade in office coincided with roughly 5,000 murders. No one is saying one party “owns” crime, but if you presided over numbers like that, you don’t get to reinvent yourself as the guardian of public safety the moment you’re on the other side of the aisle. The outrage starts to sound performative.

So what’s the government supposed to do when killings are happening daily and a more targeted bill has been blocked? The fastest lawful lever is an SOE, imperfect, blunt, and temporary while Cabinet and Parliament work through longer-term measures. Calling that “no plan” ignores the obvious: it’s crisis management while the broader framework is being fought in the Legislature.

Finally, the loudest critics often come with the weakest track records. Some of the same figures now scolding the government sat in office during years of spiralling violence and, at times, even spoke as though solving crime wasn’t their responsibility. Trinidad and Tobago can’t run on that kind of excuse-making. People aren’t asking for theatrics; they’re asking for results and the political will to back the tools needed to get them.

Sarge

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Narps.

Be careful down in T&T...a life means nothing on the island.

Trouble in schools

Minister reveals worrying new data showing spike in classroom violence and student suspensions

Education Minister Dr. Michael Dowlath says while progress has been made in reducing disruptions outside the classroom, troubling new data shows behavioural issues are increasingly occurring during instructional time. He has described the shift in schools across the country as critical, prompting revisions to the Ministry of Education’s National School Code of Conduct (NSCC).

“The most important thing we are looking at is to guard instructional time, to use as many measures as possible to maximize students’ time in the classroom. What we need is a disciplined classroom,” Dr Dowlath said yesterday, during the launch of the update at the ministry’s head office in Port-of-Spain.Dr. Dowlath first highlighted areas of improvement.

“In our school-oriented police officer evaluation program for Term One of the 2025/2026 academic year, we observed something instructive. Suspensions during lunchtime declined by approximately 15 per cent, and suspensions after school declined by roughly 25 per cent,” he said However, he revealed that classroom incidents have increased.

Check the pictures out in the link...

Where did these kids learn to be violent!!!

"if only my people could see beyond “she’s indian”"

Dem fcking Kamla Indians should be jailed.😡