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For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has wel­comed the vote by in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors that de­feat­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs), say­ing the out­come demon­strat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­sti­tu­tion­al safe­guards are work­ing as in­tend­ed.

In a state­ment is­sued fol­low­ing the Sen­ate de­bate on Tues­day, Dr Row­ley said the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors “stepped in and, in the face of threats and in­sults, pro­tect­ed this coun­try’s sta­bil­i­ty and fu­ture” by re­ject­ing what he de­scribed as “an ill-con­ceived ap­proach to crime fight­ing”.

He con­tend­ed that the pro­posed mea­sure—which he char­ac­terised as a sup­posed “crime-fight­ing panacea”—had the po­ten­tial to cre­ate hav­oc in what he de­scribed as a volatile so­ci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly if it re­sult­ed in the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of polic­ing.