Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin

Sir El­lis Clarke, il­lus­tri­ous lu­mi­nary, has de­part­ed. But lis­ten, lead­ers of T&T, we have got to deal with our present ob­sta­cles, in­clud­ing the paral­y­sis of our con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form ef­forts. This ex­er­cise must not be cos­met­ic. It must not be ur­ban-fo­cused. While at­tempts to in­tro­duce term lim­its and re­call par­lia­men­tar­i­ans must be ap­plaud­ed, the re­form must go be­yond those two sig­nif­i­cant fac­tors, and deal with the ur­gent need to de­cen­tralise gov­er­nance. We have wait­ed too long to re­spond to crit­i­cal is­sues and now we have to move ur­gent­ly to pro­vide so­lu­tions at a record-break­ing pace. And, to be quite frank, we ap­pear to be ma­jor­ing in mi­nors. We are not ready to con­front the tough ob­sta­cles. Let us move in­to the schools where the gangs in­tim­i­date prin­ci­pals. The fu­ture king­pins are there. Let us fire those who have enough mon­ey to black­mail us in the fu­ture. Let us em­pow­er our ser­vice com­mis­sions to be more proac­tive. Let us con­tin­ue to demon­strate that we have the will to im­ple­ment the bills. Let us pre­pare to die! Cit­i­zens of T&T must de­cide to unite to fight the en­e­my-the drug deal­ers at all lev­els who have ben­e­fit­ed from a cul­ture of cor­rup­tion. We have to be con­cise, com­mit­ted, com­pre­hen­sive and coura­geous. We can­not be blind par­ty mem­bers, lack­ing in ob­jec­tiv­i­ty and con­trolled by pre­ju-dice.

Now is the time to take the strug­gle against the crim­i­nal el­e­ment to the next lev­el. We have marched around the moun­tain for too long, now is the time to strike the en­e­my with full force. We must at­tack with the weapons of dis­ci­pline, in­tegri­ty, de­cen­cy and sac­ri­fice. We might even have to de­clare a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency. But this is a short-term plan. In the long term, we must cap­ture the king­pins. Now is the time!