Akash Sama­roo

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is de­fend­ing her Gov­ern­ment’s move to seek a three-month ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), in­sist­ing the mea­sure is tem­po­rary but nec­es­sary to pro­tect cit­i­zens from vi­o­lent crime af­ter what she de­scribed as decades of blood­shed and in­se­cu­ri­ty.

Speak­ing ahead of to­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate, where Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing what is es­sen­tial­ly the sec­ond ex­ten­sion to its sec­ond SoE since com­ing in­to of­fice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued that the coun­try could not af­ford a re­turn to the lev­els of vi­o­lence ex­pe­ri­enced over the past quar­ter-cen­tu­ry.