Akash Sama­roo

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) re­mains will­ing to work with Gov­ern­ment in the fight against crime, but warned that co­op­er­a­tion should not be mis­tak­en for un­con­di­tion­al sup­port, as she crit­i­cised the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­quest for a fur­ther three-month ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Con­tribut­ing to Wednes­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the ex­ten­sion mo­tion, Beck­les said crime af­fects all cit­i­zens re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion and re­quires a unit­ed na­tion­al re­sponse. How­ev­er, she main­tained that Gov­ern­ment had failed to pro­vide suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence that the con­tin­ued use of emer­gency pow­ers was the an­swer.