On Thursday, speaking at the Diego Martin Borough Corporation’s third annual Civic Awards held at the Diego Martin South Community Centre, Trinidad and Tobago Opposition Leader Pennelope Beckles delivered a sharp rebuke of the current administration’s deployment of a national state of emergency (SoE), arguing that the measure has drifted far from its intended purpose of curbing crime and become a tool to suppress ordinary citizens and political opposition.
Beckles told the assembled audience that she has heard repeated firsthand accounts—and many attendees in the room have themselves experienced—how preventative detention orders, regulatory powers designed to be deployed only with extreme caution against verified public safety threats, are now being arbitrarily applied to law-abiding residents. She pointed to a recent, high-profile incident targeting her own party, the People’s National Movement (PNM): the party’s longstanding headquarters at Balisier House has been served with an Unexplained Wealth Order, a move Beckles frames as deliberate political intimidation masked as formal legal procedure.
“When the instruments of the State are turned against a private citizen with no criminal charge filed, or against the headquarters of an opposition political party, we are no longer fighting crime—we are silencing dissent,” Beckles emphasized. She made clear she would not remain silent on the issue, regardless of venue. “We are living through an unwanted, unnecessary state of emergency. I envision a Trinidad and Tobago where, if a state of emergency must be invoked at all, it is used as a precise scalpel against actual threats, not a blunt cudgel that harms innocent people.”
Beyond her critique of the state of emergency, Beckles laid out a broader vision for governance in the twin-island nation. She called for meaningful empowerment and adequate resourcing for local government, noting that local bodies should not be sidelined as a “poor relative” of central government. Instead, she argued, they are essential partners in delivering core public services—from repairing failing drainage infrastructure to building public parks, creating local employment, and rebuilding community pride one borough at a time.
Beckles also spoke to the value of Trinidad and Tobago’s multiethnic tapestry, highlighted by the diverse population of Diego Martin that includes Afro-Trinidadians, Indo-Trinidadians, Chinese, European, Syrian-Lebanese, First Peoples, and migrants from other Caribbean islands who have made the nation their home. “Every ethnic thread should be celebrated, not exploited for political division,” she said.
Turning to the legacy of the nation’s first prime minister, the late Dr Eric Williams, who founded the modern republic, Beckles recalled that Williams built the nation from grassroots, not from an elite ivory tower. His vision rested on the conviction that investment in education, national self-respect, and unity would lift the small twin-island state onto the global stage. Working tirelessly to advance that vision, Williams ultimately sacrificed his own health in service of the country, leaving a legacy of a republic that generations of Trinbagonians can be proud of. “We cannot, in this patriotic season, allow that inheritance to be squandered—not by lawlessness, not by careless rhetoric, not by a government that treats its own citizens as enemies of the state,” Beckles said.
Beckles closed with a call for a new approach to governance, saying the nation deserves an administration that turns hope into tangible policy rather than empty campaign slogans. She affirmed her commitment to carry this vision from the Diego Martin stage to the Prime Minister’s official residence at Whitehall, should voters give her the opportunity, drawing on the same conviction that brought her into public office as a councilor in Arima back in 1992.
Echoing a prior remark from former Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Beckles concluded: “Do not let anyone tell you that this is a lawless dump. This is home. This is sacred ground, watered by the sweat of every ancestor who ever called it home. It deserves leadership that treats it that way.”
The ceremony, held under the theme “Stronger Together, Faith For Family, Community and Borough”, was attended by multiple senior members of the borough corporation, including Mayor Akeliah Glasgow-Warner.