Many years ago, I was standing in a line at a grocery in Cascade. It was Christmas so my shopping cart was laden with more than the usual emergency supply of toilet paper and instant noodles. The rickety trolley was brimming with turkey, and the finest array of intoxicants their liquor aisle had to offer. In front of me was Denis Solo-mon, university lecturer, commentator and columnist. Given that he was a regular guest on the morning programme I was hosting at the time, I felt the courteous thing to do was to convey the customary hollow greetings of the season. "How are you sir? Merry Christmas and all this." He threw me a glare which I think his face was cocked for all morning so I did not take it personally. He then looked down at my cart of mirth-making materials, looked back up at me with glasses perched on the tip of his nose and harrumphed, "Drink up. It is all you can do, drink to forget."
Now I didn't know him personally but I was very familiar with his work and I followed his newspaper column. At that moment, though, I could not help but mumble to myself, "God strike me down if I become one-quarter embittered and jaded as he seems." That was roughly eight years ago and I am now where he was then. Even worse, I can't be where he is now which is anywhere but here. When I heard the news of the imposition of a "limited" state of emergency, I let out a sigh that probably outlasted the deflating of the blimp. According to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, this was a direct response to an unusually high butcher's bill, most of the killings seeming to have been accomplished in a three or four-day period.
I thought long and hard on how this should be addressed in a column. This is a highly emotive matter and has handily stepped in as the latest lightening rod for our ever-smouldering political and racial tensions. On the face of it, given the desperate state of the country, one cannot help but conclude that a state of emergency is necessary to put the boot of the law on the throat of criminal enterprise. OK...but then there are some serious problems with this strategy. The proverbial fly in the ointment, Basdeo Panday, said it well, "A state of emergency is a serious thing you know!" It also took some time but everyone, including the Attorney General, has come to accept that this is in fact a national state of emergency. The order signed by the President makes reference to "a state of public emergency."
Quibbling over the word "limited" was, I have come to suspect, an attempt by the Government to mitigate the angst and panic associated with a widely applicable order. Well, that had the opposite effect, creating so much confusion in the minds of people on how this thing was meant to work that it opened the door for speculation so wide that I actually saw an initial list of the affected areas used in a television report which was lifted straight off Facebook, and it was laughably inaccurate. There is another serious problem and I think this was acknowledged, if not by his words cer- tainly by his tone in a television interview on TV6. Attorney General Anand Ramlogan begrudgingly conceded as "unfortunate" the fact that the Police Commissioner and his deputy, and by that I mean his actual deputy Jack Ewatski, left the country during one of the most significant operations that the Police Service will ever undertake.
State mouthpieces were heard to counter the "decision by vaps" argument by suggesting that this state of emergency was being masticated by the Government for quite some time. That would explain why, for all his shadowboxing, Mr Ramlogan simply could not give an explanation as to how the two most important figures in law enforcement could be absent when this plan was drafted, if a plan was drafted. Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley floated some salient concerns in this sordid affair. If you are targeting gangs and guns, why not enforce the very same draconian anti-gang legislation that you fought so vociferously for in Parliament? Unfortunately, other contributions from the Opposition haven't been particularly useful.
Member of Parliament Fitzgerald Hinds demurred thusly, "The only reason the Government can claim success with the murder rate is because of pre-existing PNM policies ...and they are taking the credit for it!" That sort of thing never gets old... but then, it really does. PNM party chairman Franklyn Khan, who carried his unfortunate trademark smile through a serious news conference, also warned, "Any government that calls a state of emergency to battle crime and it fails... it is time to pack your bags and go." It will be difficult, even for the most easily distracted among us, to forget the nine years in office that the previous administration failed spectacularly at roping this beast.
There are some fundamental issues however that we must rise above the politics to engage: what is envisaged here as an outcome? Already the Prime Minister has made the sophomore blunder of claiming victory on the morning of the second day with her "crime is down to almost zero." Former National Security Minister Martin Joseph was whipped mercilessly for his Monday morning math which always seemed to change immediately after he announced minor statistical movement on murders. There is no reason to think that the public is ready to swallow the same subterfuge even if it is sweetened with honey.
There is profound confusion as to what this is supposed to accomplish. The expectation of this state of emergency is that the police and army will be motivated to act on a vast collection of intelligence that would not necessarily stand up to the scrutiny of the courts. A widening of their powers should give them an opportunity to apply additional pressure (accepted norms of torture and so on) in a less than hospitable environment to all of those drug pushers and gang leaders who kill people in front of us every day. This state of emergency should be used to make being a criminal so uncomfortable that by a pro-cess of applied attrition, names and places begin to tumble out of properly swollen lips. In my opinion, this initiative is necessary but that could be debatedad infinitum.
There are two heavy prices to pay if this state of emergency was, indeed, improperly conceived. The People's Partnership will pay a severe political price for its miscalculation, which has fomented dangerous rhetoric on the ground (listen to the PNM junta on the talk shows). The country will also pay a serious price. Bandits will not become more brazen as has been suggested. People are being killed right now in broad daylight in front of God and everybody. The real concern is that the national consciousness will eventually accept that and, with the most devastating artillery in your arsenal spent and the murderers remaining untouched in their burrows, this will result in a despair from which I fear there is no salvation, limited or otherwise.
THOUGHTS
• On the face of it, one cannot help but conclude that a state of emergency is necessary.
• Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley floated some sa-lient concerns in this sordid affair.
• There are some fundamen-tal issues we must rise above the politics to engage.