As Trinidad and Tobago’s Special Operations Bill 2026 prepares for a final, unamended vote in the Senate this Tuesday, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has made her stance on national crime control clear: a new state of emergency (SoE) remains on the table if criminal threats re-emerge, and she will not hesitate to enact it. In a social media statement released over the weekend, the Prime Minister framed the upcoming bill as a direct extension of what she called a “highly successful” previous state of emergency, which resulted in 3,552 people being charged with criminal offenses.