The news re­ports of the week­end were filled with a tan­gle of crime news, views, al­le­ga­tions, the pas­sage of the most re­cent State of Emer­gency laws in the Par­lia­ment, con­fused claims and coun­ters sur­round­ing the mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal, and in­for­ma­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter of the ben­e­fits to be gained from T&T’s part­ner­ship in the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as.

An out­sider, ex­posed to the news, can eas­i­ly con­clude, that crime con­tin­ues to have a choke­hold on the coun­try, while politi­cians from the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion ex­change blame, and Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar seeks to re­as­sure that T&T’s sov­er­eign­ty re­mains in­tact, notwith­stand­ing its de­pen­dence on the agen­da and sur­veil­lance of the US.

There was even what turned out to be com­ic-tragedy when De­fence Min­is­ter, Wayne Sturge, sought to heap coals on a for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to re­spond pos­i­tive­ly to pre­vent the mur­der of at­tor­ney, Dana See­ta­hal, when in fact, it was the UNC which was in pow­er at the rel­e­vant time.

More­over, and seem­ing to com­pound the er­ror of the Min­is­ter, the UNC Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of the rel­e­vant pe­ri­od, Gary Grif­fith, de­nied that he ever re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that See­ta­hal’s life was in dan­ger. 

Adding a few steps to the crime tan­go, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­my had the new State of Emer­gency passed in­to law with a se­ri­ous warn­ing to cit­i­zens who may seek to make threats against the Prime Min­is­ter, “In some ter­ri­to­ries, you go to jail for that,” Je­re­my warned, with a chill­ing ad­di­tion that “In oth­er ter­ri­to­ries, you are shot for that.”

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, fresh from her trip to sign T&T on to the US Shield of Amer­i­c­as agree­ment, fo­cused on the as­sis­tance that crime fight­ing here will re­ceive from the US for be­ing con­tained with­in the pro­tec­tion of the Shield.

But once again she fell back on mak­ing un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims about the PNM be­ing fund­ed by drug traf­fick­ing.  As on a pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sion, the Prime Min­is­ter did not in­di­cate if she will make an of­fi­cial re­port to the po­lice on such al­leged se­ri­ous crim­i­nal­i­ty. 

As if to in­di­cate to the politi­cians that talk about coun­ter­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty is easy, in the bustling east­ern town of San­gre Grande, the crim­i­nals by­passed all of the chat­ter and in broad day­light, pumped five bul­lets in­to the body of the busi­ness­man, Dan­ny Guer­ra.

On the oth­er side, PNM’s po­lit­i­cal leader, MP Pen­ny Beck­les, re­spond­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter’s al­le­ga­tions by invit­ing her to make them out­side of the Par­lia­ment, for which she can be sued.

The re­sult of it all is a con­fus­ing en­tan­gle­ment, con­tain­ing al­le­ga­tions, coun­ters, threats against mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion, weak leg­is­la­tion in need of be­ing up­dat­ed and a re­liance on the US es­tab­lished Shield to take care of T&T’s se­cu­ri­ty from the in­ter­na­tion­al trade in drugs.

From all of the hap­pen­ings over the last week, the crim­i­nal el­e­ments must have con­clud­ed that such pose no im­me­di­ate and deep threat to their op­er­a­tions. They there­fore were free to gun down Guer­ra un­afraid of be­ing caught and pros­e­cut­ed.

Need­ed, is for the Par­lia­ment, the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion, the law agen­cies to bring the pop­u­la­tion in­to a rel­e­vant and pow­er­ful counter to the very dan­ger­ous crim­i­nal­i­ty fac­ing the coun­try and to leave be­hind their po­lit­i­cal games.