Curfew calls raise concerns over business confidence

An­drea Perez-Sobers

T&T’s con­fronta­tion with es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lent crime has sharp­ened the na­tion­al de­bate over whether a state of emer­gency should be deep­ened with the in­tro­duc­tion of a cur­few.

As of Tues­day, the mur­der fig­ure from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) stood at 110.

The TTPS over the week­end said it had reached a “sig­nif­i­cant op­er­a­tional mile­stone” on the 45th day of the cur­rent state of emer­gency, re­port­ing that 170 of 258 de­ten­tion or­ders is­sued have been ex­e­cut­ed to date.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (Op­er­a­tions) Suzette Mar­tin said the fig­ures al­ready ex­ceed those record­ed at the end of the pre­vi­ous state of emer­gency, when 205 de­ten­tion or­ders were ap­proved and 153 ex­e­cut­ed.

Across the as­sess­ments of three in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts, Dr Mark Kir­ton, Pro­fes­sor Ivelaw Lloyd Grif­fith and Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, a con­sis­tent thread emerges: ris­ing crime presents a re­al and im­me­di­ate risk to con­fi­dence, but a cur­few, if in­tro­duced pre­ma­ture­ly or with­out clear jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, could com­pound that risk by sig­nalling in­sta­bil­i­ty and con­strain­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Con­fi­dence ver­sus con­trol

Kir­ton, based in Guyana, sit­u­at­ed the is­sue with­in T&T’s re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ing, warn­ing that the es­ca­la­tion in vi­o­lent crime is al­ready shap­ing per­cep­tions be­yond its bor­ders.

“There’s ob­vi­ous­ly an es­ca­la­tion in crime and vi­o­lence in Trinidad. The ef­fects ex­tend not on­ly in the do­mes­tic sit­u­a­tion, but it has some im­pact re­gion­al­ly be­cause Trinidad is seen as one of the lead­ing coun­tries in Cari­com,” he stat­ed.

That po­si­tion­ing mat­ters for busi­ness, as Kir­ton point­ed to the link be­tween se­cu­ri­ty con­di­tions and in­vestor sen­ti­ment, not­ing that giv­en the in­creas­es in vi­o­lent crime, in­vest­ment and in­vestor con­fi­dence in Trinidad al­so have to be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

Trav­el ad­vi­sories is­sued by for­eign gov­ern­ments, he cit­ed, fur­ther re­in­force those con­cerns in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­place.

How­ev­er, while crime it­self threat­ens con­fi­dence, Kir­ton cau­tioned that a cur­few could in­tro­duce an ad­di­tion­al lay­er of risk.

“A cur­few would add to a loss of con­fi­dence in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, es­pe­cial­ly by in­vestors, and such a mea­sure sug­gests re­stric­tions on in­ter­ac­tion and would af­fect the ease of do­ing busi­ness in Trinidad,” Kir­ton ex­plained.

He al­so em­pha­sised that the re­sponse should be mea­sured rather than re­ac­tive, ar­gu­ing for co­or­di­nat­ed en­gage­ment across sec­tors.

“There’s a need for all stake­hold­er en­gage­ment, gov­ern­ment, civ­il so­ci­ety, and the pri­vate sec­tor,” he said.

The in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert framed the so­lu­tion as an “all-of-coun­try ap­proach” aimed at restor­ing con­fi­dence with­out trig­ger­ing un­in­tend­ed eco­nom­ic con­se­quences.

Busi­ness re­silience and part­ner­ship

Mean­while, Grif­fith ap­proached the is­sue from a com­par­a­tive and busi­ness-fo­cused per­spec­tive, ar­gu­ing that while states of emer­gency and even cur­fews can cre­ate short-term dis­rup­tions, they do not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­sult in sus­tained eco­nom­ic de­cline.

“Draw­ing on re­gion­al ex­pe­ri­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly Ja­maica, there have been blips of neg­a­tive im­pact on busi­ness but not sus­tained im­pact on busi­ness,” he not­ed.

This dis­tinc­tion is crit­i­cal for in­vestors, as Grif­fith in­di­cat­ed that the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor is not the ex­is­tence of ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures but how they are man­aged and com­mu­ni­cat­ed.

“It doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be a con­tin­u­ous­ly neg­a­tive im­pact,” he stressed, adding that out­comes de­pend on gov­er­nance, clar­i­ty and the pro­vi­sion of as­sur­ances.

For the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, pre­dictabil­i­ty is key, and Grif­fith un­der­scored the im­por­tance of gov­ern­ment sig­nalling that any ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures are tem­po­rary and pur­pose­ful.

“The gov­ern­ment [must] take com­pen­sat­ing mea­sures di­rect­ly with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to give as­sur­ances that this is not a peren­ni­al, per­ma­nent con­di­tion,” he said.

He al­so shift­ed part of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on­to the pri­vate sec­tor, ar­gu­ing that crime re­duc­tion re­quires ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion be­yond the state.

“The pri­vate sec­tor, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, needs to al­so in­vest in an­ti-crime mea­sures,” he ar­gued, ad­vo­cat­ing deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion through com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives and part­ner­ships with law en­force­ment.

He al­so cau­tioned against over­re­act­ing to ex­ter­nal sig­nals such as trav­el ad­vi­sories, not­ing that these are on­ly one fac­tor in in­vest­ment de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

“The ad­vi­sories by them­selves are not a death knell, as in­vestors will weigh broad­er re­gion­al and glob­al con­di­tions,” he point­ed out.

How­ev­er, he warned that per­sis­tent neg­a­tive sig­nals with­out vis­i­ble im­prove­ment could erode con­fi­dence over time.

Grif­fith’s ad­vice to pol­i­cy­mak­ers was clear: main­tain sta­bil­i­ty, avoid es­ca­la­tion un­less nec­es­sary, and build part­ner­ships.

“If I were ad­vis­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, I would say stay on the course and re­sist the cur­few, rec­om­mend­ing that ex­ist­ing mea­sures be al­lowed to run their course be­fore con­sid­er­ing fur­ther re­stric­tions,” Grif­fith said.

Tourism, op­tics and eco­nom­ic tim­ing

Gon­za­les placed greater em­pha­sis on the im­me­di­ate eco­nom­ic and per­cep­tu­al ef­fects of a cur­few, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to tourism and short-term in­vest­ment flows.

He not­ed that height­ened re­stric­tions would like­ly in­flu­ence how the coun­try is viewed ex­ter­nal­ly.

Tourism, by its na­ture, is high­ly sen­si­tive to both re­al and per­ceived risk. Gon­za­les point­ed out that trav­el ad­vi­sories from key mar­kets such as the Unit­ed States, the Unit­ed King­dom and Cana­da would am­pli­fy con­cerns.

“They will all talk about it, and that will sort of de­ter tourists from com­ing here,” he said.

Be­yond tourism, Gon­za­les high­light­ed the be­hav­iour­al re­sponse of in­vestors, par­tic­u­lar­ly those con­sid­er­ing new projects.

“Those who are look­ing to make a de­ci­sion to in­vest might want to wait and see. This would put a pause on de­ci­sion-mak­ing rather than an im­me­di­ate with­draw­al. This de­lay, how­ev­er, can have mea­sur­able eco­nom­ic con­se­quences if it af­fects project time­lines and cap­i­tal in­flows,” he out­lined.

At the do­mes­tic lev­el, he said the in­tro­duc­tion of a cur­few would di­rect­ly af­fect busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

“Restau­rants open un­til 11, 12 o’clock, so re­stric­tions on move­ment would force some busi­ness­es to scale back or close ear­li­er, re­duc­ing rev­enue and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty,” Gon­za­les said.

He sug­gest­ed that re­gion­al gov­ern­ments are of­ten aware of these trade-offs and, there­fore, cau­tious in adopt­ing more re­stric­tive mea­sures.

“They don’t re­al­ly want to have a sit­u­a­tion where the world is talk­ing about the coun­try as hav­ing a strong state of emer­gency and all these con­trols; rep­u­ta­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions play a sig­nif­i­cant role in pol­i­cy de­ci­sions,” he said.

Cal­i­brat­ed re­sponse

Tak­en to­geth­er, the per­spec­tives of Kir­ton, Grif­fith and Gon­za­les point to a shared con­clu­sion: the re­sponse to crime must bal­ance ur­gency with re­straint. Ris­ing vi­o­lence pos­es a clear threat to con­fi­dence, but the in­tro­duc­tion of a cur­few car­ries its own eco­nom­ic and rep­u­ta­tion­al costs.

The ex­perts con­verge on the im­por­tance of cred­i­bil­i­ty. Ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment, clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion and vis­i­ble progress in ad­dress­ing crime are more like­ly to sus­tain con­fi­dence than sweep­ing re­stric­tions on move­ment.

As Kir­ton not­ed, the ob­jec­tive is to en­sure that peo­ple gain greater con­fi­dence in the rule of law and in law en­force­ment agen­cies.

Grif­fith’s em­pha­sis on part­ner­ship re­in­forces this ap­proach, po­si­tion­ing the pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il so­ci­ety as ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in the so­lu­tion.

Mean­while, Gon­za­les’ fo­cus on op­tics un­der­scored the need to man­age pol­i­cy de­ci­sions that are per­ceived both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Busi­ness Guardian re­search on cred­i­ble in­ter­na­tion­al news web­sites showed that coun­tries in­clud­ing El Sal­vador and Hon­duras, have is­sued emer­gency de­c­la­ra­tions to sus­pend civ­il lib­er­ties and em­pow­er se­cu­ri­ty forces to com­bat crime, de­spite mixed re­sults.

Both El Sal­vador and Hon­duras have al­so pro­longed their states of emer­gency, even though such mea­sures are de­signed to be tem­po­rary.

Last year, the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights called on the Hon­duran gov­ern­ment to end its state of emer­gency, not­ing that it had been ex­tend­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17 times.