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A mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for a sec­ond time was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day with 27 Gov­ern­ment votes in favour and 12 Op­po­si­tion votes against. There were no ab­sten­tions.

The ap­proval grants the Gov­ern­ment an ad­di­tion­al three months of en­hanced emer­gency pow­ers, de­spite fierce ob­jec­tions from the Op­po­si­tion bench­es.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who pi­lot­ed the mo­tion, in­sist­ed the SoE re­mained a crit­i­cal na­tion­al-se­cu­ri­ty in­stru­ment to sup­port ac­tive op­er­a­tions tar­get­ing crim­i­nal gangs and or­gan­ised crime net­works.