Jagdeo not keen on limited state of emergency
Stabroek News
February 2, 2003
President Jagdeo feels that a limited state of emergency to deal with the situation on the lower East Coast would be ineffective and citizens would be unwilling to accept the suspension of their civil rights if a national state of emergency were to be declared.
Jagdeo also told Stabroek News in an exclusive interview that he was prepared to do whatever it took to bring the Guyana Police Force up to a level where it could operate professionally and be well equipped to deal with the type of violent crimes to which it had to respond.
By professionally he meant, "they [the Police] must improve their investigative capability; they must improve their intelligence [gathering]; they must be well trained to deal with this type of crime; they have to operate within and respect the laws of the country and all the human rights laws of the country...
"There must be clear guidelines within which they must operate as no one is above the law".
About the declaration of a limited state of emergency, President Jagdeo suggested that if it were enforced to deal with the situation in Buxton, the criminals operating on the lower East Coast would simply move to Georgetown.
"We have explored it at various levels and from the technical assessments that were done, it was considered that it would not be wise. It would be ineffective to declare a state of emergency in a crime type of situation."
The President observed, that "if you have mostly public disorder, a state of emergency is much more effective [in that situation] than a limited state of emergency assuming you were to declare it in Buxton."
But he said a national state of emergency had all kinds of implications in terms of its duration, because you had to suppress some civil liberties.
He questioned whether the people of this country would want their civil liberties suspended as some of them "complain about the long line at the road blocks [on the lower East Coast] ... much less when we say to them at six o'clock you are off the streets. You can imagine the public outcry."
"Many people although they complain are not prepared to deal with the suspension of some civil liberties to deal with this issue." He noted that the United States suspended a whole range of civil liberties in the wake of the September 11 attacks with some 100 people imprisoned for over a year without a trial and their names not even known.
In contrast he said the government passed two laws, far less draconian than those enacted in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. One was to monitor the deportees when they come back here and the other says that if you commit a terrorist act and as a result it causes the death of someone, the death penalty would be applicable - and Amnesty International was concerned about that.
