There was no mask of in­tent. The cloudy façade of nar­co­traf­fick­ing didn’t hide the truth—a truth de­tailed in a new ver­sion of the Mon­roe Doc­trine that ex­plains the US strat­e­gy to dom­i­nate the west­ern hemi­sphere.

The irony of the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment that this coun­try is a “law­less dump” should not be lost on any­one, giv­en the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for “killing vi­o­lent­ly” al­leged drug traf­fick­ers, con­trary to in­ter­na­tion­al laws.

Law­less­ness will ex­ist wher­ev­er law en­force­ment is ab­sent or where there’s de­lib­er­ate dis­re­gard for the law, ev­i­dent in re­cent times and suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments, lack­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty by not ad­her­ing to laws, as ev­i­denced in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s re­ports, and when po­lit­i­cal con­ve­nience and greed dri­ve be­hav­iour. One may adopt a moral per­spec­tive that it isn’t on­ly a mat­ter of law, but the ab­sence of a moral com­pass guid­ing be­hav­iour. Cit­i­zens have a du­ty to obey the law.

Crim­i­nal net­works have shat­tered our zone of peace, but more so­cial­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly de­struc­tive are pub­lic and po­lice cor­rup­tion, and gov­ern­ments that greased the drug dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work by fa­cil­i­tat­ing “com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers” aka gang­sters with work projects, as con­firmed by for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­ers. Al­so, the po­lice’s abysmal de­tec­tion rate, and non-pros­e­cu­tion of cor­rupt of­fi­cers who “let co­caine pass” through le­gal ports.

One ex­pects the Gov­ern­ment to ex­am­ine the hu­man con­di­tion and im­ple­ment poli­cies to im­prove it. Dumps are garbage heaps. Den­i­grat­ing the coun­try is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and an ad­mis­sion of suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments’ fail­ure to en­sure ef­fec­tive law en­force­ment, as apt­ly in­di­cat­ed by the alarm­ing traf­fic law vi­o­la­tions by neg­li­gent cit­i­zens. It’s fail­ure to im­ple­ment ef­fi­cient sys­tems to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mon­i­tor road be­hav­iour and po­lice per­for­mance, and to im­ple­ment ed­u­ca­tion poli­cies that build en­ter­pris­ing, civic-mind­ed com­mu­ni­ties. It’s the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to stem ram­pant crime, even un­der a pro­longed State of Emer­gency. The home­land se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter en­dorsed the “law­less dump” in­sult, un­der­min­ing the po­lice com­mis­sion­er’s good ef­forts. He was a ca­reer po­lice of­fi­cer. Is he aware that the po­lice con­tributed to the crim­i­nals trau­ma­tis­ing us be­cause of their cor­rup­tion, fail­ure to de­tect and dis­rupt crim­i­nal net­works, and crit­i­cal­ly, to pro­duce in­con­tro­vert­ible pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al ev­i­dence, and turn up in courts?

Each gov­ern­ment ac­cus­es its pre­de­ces­sor of cor­rup­tion, as this one has con­cern­ing cor­rup­tion in CEPEP, WASA, HDC, Ude­cott, among oth­ers. What hap­pened to the cor­rupt of­fi­cials and con­trac­tors in the Pi­ar­co Air­port scan­dal? In Life­S­port, of­fi­cials and con­trac­tors al­leged­ly di­vert­ed mil­lions for per­son­al use. What about Petrotrin, the Vin­cent Nel­son scan­dal, and EM­BD’s fraud? These are a few ex­am­ples of en­dem­ic pub­lic cor­rup­tion. Over the past two decades, re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $40 bil­lion with no ac­count­abil­i­ty, know­ing­ly vi­o­lat­ing the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit law. Who is held ac­count­able? In­ter­est­ing­ly, in some in­stances, while civ­il ac­tions and pros­e­cu­tions are un­der­way, per­sons who had over­sight of these in­sti­tu­tions are again elect­ed of­fi­cials, and in one case, out on bail. They were ap­point­ed min­is­ters or sen­a­tors, con­trol­ling bil­lions of dol­lars. Worse, as Cab­i­net mem­bers, they may have pow­er over the same pub­lic com­pa­nies that have them in court, con­trary to good gov­er­nance prin­ci­ples.

Peo­ple are in­no­cent un­til proven guilty, but in prin­ci­ple, in­sti­tu­tions do not hire those who are sub­jects in crim­i­nal cas­es or charged with fraud. Min­is­ters hold po­si­tions of pow­er and are re­spon­si­ble for pub­lic mon­ey. Would a bank or any pub­licly list­ed (stock ex­change) busi­ness hire such per­sons? No.

So­cial jus­tice? A co­conut ven­dor must pay $19,000 in fines for break­ing traf­fic laws, yet there are no con­se­quences for the bil­lions of pub­lic monies stolen by cor­rupt, high-in­come of­fi­cials and oth­ers. Pros­e­cu­tion fail­ures re­sult from po­lice in­ef­fi­cien­cies, al­leged po­lit­i­cal pro­tec­tion of mem­bers (Sec­tion 34), de­fi­cient cir­cum­stan­tial ev­i­dence, and de­lay­ing tac­tics as cas­es drag on for years, among oth­er rea­sons. What of the Jus­tice Sys­tem? Our gov­ern­ments dump law­less­ness on us, and now this one has tak­en law­less­ness in­ter­na­tion­al by virtue of its sup­port for the “vi­o­lent” ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings of al­leged drug traf­fick­ers.

Do we have a prob­lem with a radar to fa­cil­i­tate drug in­ter­dic­tion and bor­der se­cu­ri­ty? Or US/T&T rou­tine co­op­er­a­tion in the fight against crim­i­nal drug net­works? Like­ly not. Be­cause of the mil­i­tary con­text, many be­lieve that car­tel nar­co­traf­fick­ing was a pre­text to at­tack Venezuela, and T&T’s role re­mains am­bigu­ous.

We live in a beau­ti­ful coun­try with de­cent, peace­ful-mind­ed peo­ple—yeah, undis­ci­plined peo­ple who mock mind-menders mess­ing with their heads and gaslight­ing them with dou­ble­s­peak. Lead­er­ship should be ex­em­plary and truth­ful to build trust and con­fi­dence, en­cour­age mu­tu­al re­spect, and mo­ti­vate us to high­er lev­els of ex­is­tence. Hope­ful­ly, the Gov­ern­ment will clean up its dump.