When he was the Min­is­ter of Works, the now na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter con­stant­ly re­mind­ed us that rivers were so clean, "you could eat out of them" and flood­ing would be a thing of the past. He was to build re­ten­tion ponds all over; and when the floods came, he told us it was an act of God. Of course noth­ing was ever built. He spoke of tun­nels be­tween Mar­aval and Diego Mar­tin and one to Mara­cas al­so. He promised many times, to bring laws to pre­vent the in­dis­crim­i­nate cut­ting of the hill­sides. He was to re­store Pres­i­dent's House in a short time. Two years lat­er it's in the same con­di­tion. The new lane of the Diego Mar­tin High­way, to ease traf­fic be­tween Vic­to­ria Gar­dens and Ac­ton Court, he told us and Par­lia­ment, had "start­ed months ago" and up to to­day no one could see any form of con­struc­tion work. A sim­ple wall by Coun­try Club could not be re­placed. This "no one above the law" min­is­ter promised to le­galise "PH cars," and gave per­mis­sion for all pri­vate car dri­vers to use their cars for PH hire. To­day every oth­er car now stops any­where, to pick up any­one and the use of pri­vate cars for hire is still against the law in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He was part and par­cel and lead vo­cal­ists on the West Port-of-Spain traf­fic plan, and now that it has sud­den­ly end­ed, not a word. When he was giv­en the port­fo­lio of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty he wast­ed no time in telling us of a clin­i­cal and sur­gi­cal crime plan that would be swift, how­ev­er we still can­not see any ev­i­dence of a plan as the mur­der rate con­tin­ues to rise. He vis­it­ed the rel­a­tives of a mur­dered Chi­nese cou­ple com­plete with lights, cam­eras and no ac­tion and promised to vis­it every mur­dered vic­tim's home, leav­ing the op­po­si­tion leader to com­ment that he would soon be part of Simp­son's and Allen's fu­ner­al homes; and when the mur­der rate con­tin­ued to rise his si­lence be­came more deaf­en­ing. He an­nounced the pos­si­ble re­place­ment of CCTV cam­eras with bomb-proof ones be­cause ban­dits were shoot­ing up the or­di­nary ones. Ev­i­dence we are still to see. He then in­formed ban­dits of high-tech equip­ment that will al­low the po­lice to de­tect where a shot is fired and have them ar­rive on the scene with­in min­utes. And so the en­ter­tain­ment con­tin­ues non-stop. He has promised to go af­ter the big and small fish in the drug and mon­ey laun­der­ing trades, but with his track record, this may turn out to be fly­ing fish he is re­fer­ring to. This min­is­ter springs out at every op­por­tu­ni­ty and has suc­cess­ful­ly put the min­is­ter of in­for­ma­tion out of busi­ness with his side shows, has now tak­en to us­ing ex­pres­sions of the late Dr Williams such as "Let jack­ass­es bray," so I guess it's on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore we hear "Who don't like it, can get to hell out of here" as he con­tin­ues his cha­rade of end­less promis­es.

C Pe­ters

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