Seem­ing­ly over-anx­ious to con­tin­ue his in­volve­ment in the con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin High­way, new Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has tak­en what some peo­ple see as pre­cip­i­tate and in­ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion in call­ing out the army to de­stroy the camp of the High­way Re-route Move­ment. In­deed, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj has ques­tioned the le­gal­i­ty of the ac­tion of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.

Mr Warn­er said at a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day that he checked with the new Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Sen­a­tor Em­manuel George whether he want­ed the con­struc­tion of the high­way to re­sume its orig­i­nal speed-that is be­fore work was stopped for con­sul­ta­tion with the pro­test­ers.

When Mr George said yes, Mr Warn­er called the Chief of De­fence Staff, Mr Ma­haraj, and asked for an army con­tin­gent to go at 5.30 am yes­ter­day to de­mol­ish the camp. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter did not say any­thing about how the po­lice be­came in­volved, but re­ports and pic­tures from the site in­di­cate that a con­tin­gent of po­lice of­fi­cers was al­so on the scene.

Mr Warn­er did not re­veal at his news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day how the po­lice con­tin­gent ar­rived at the Debe camp. It would be in­ter­est­ing to find out if he al­so called the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and made the same "re­quest" for po­lice to be part of the team which de­mol­ished the camp, and on what ba­sis.

In ap­point­ing Mr Warn­er last week, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar called him a "man of ac­tion." And as is well known from the his­to­ry of his in­volve­ment lo­cal­ly with the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion and from his decades as a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive of FI­FA, Mr Warn­er gets things done quick­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly. How­ev­er, act­ing quick­ly is dif­fer­ent from act­ing ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

In the cir­cum­stances, there­fore, the con­sti­tu­tion­al ex­perts must say if Mr Warn­er was with­in his re­mit as a min­is­ter, or did he over­step the bounds in ef­fec­tive­ly or­der­ing the head of the de­fence force to send a squad of army of­fi­cers? In his pre­vi­ous role of Works Min­is­ter, Mr Warn­er crossed swords with the pro­test­ers more than once. By his lat­est ac­tion, he now at­tracts the sus­pi­cion that his first move in his new min­istry has been to use the new pow­ers con­ferred on him by that port­fo­lio to en­act a vendet­ta against mem­bers of the High­way Re-Route Move­ment who ver­bal­ly roughed him up at con­sul­ta­tions and meet­ings.

No one is say­ing that the new Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter should not take swift and de­ci­sive ac­tion. In fact, even many of Mr Warn­er's de­trac­tors are hop­ing that by ex­er­cis­ing his much-vaunt­ed char­ac­ter­is­tic en­er­gy he will be able to make a dent in crime where so many of his pre­de­ces­sors have failed.

But while it is quite clear that ac­tion is need­ed from the new na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, the kind of ac­tion that the pop­u­la­tion is long­ing for is a com­pre­hen­sive and dras­tic cam­paign against the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties of gangs and their mem­bers, the in­ces­sant mur­ders, drug-traf­fick­ing, rob­beries, and oth­er forms of se­ri­ous crime.

While the an­ti-high­way pro­test­ers may some­times be dra­mat­ic, there is no ques­tion that they are crim­i­nals or that they raise fear in the hearts of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. Most as­sured­ly, if Mr Warn­er had in­sti­gat­ed ac­tion by the se­cu­ri­ty forces against crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions there would have been al­most unan­i­mous com­men­da­tion. That is where the min­is­ter has to fo­cus his ac­tion-not on peo­ple ex­er­cis­ing their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to protest peace­ful­ly in a law­ful cause.