Tony Fras­er

The crit­i­cal is­sue is not whether the find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions of the Ryan re­port are ad­e­quate to the task of im­pact­ing mean­ing­ful­ly on the crim­i­nal cul­ture. Rather, the ques­tion is whether the Gov­ern­ment has the po­lit­i­cal will and space to im­ple­ment the mea­sures ad­vo­cat­ed.Ques­tion: Does the Gov­ern­ment have suf­fi­cient of the en­abling cred­i­bil­i­ty to per­suade the so­ci­ety to buy in­to poli­cies and pro­grammes to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Com­mit­tee?

But it is even more fun­da­men­tal than that. The cyn­ic may deem the es­tab­lish­ment of the Ryan team and the evan­gel­i­cal zeal of the Prime Min­is­ter for the rec­om­men­da­tions to seem like "man­na from heav­en," pub­lic re­la­tions hype as the Gov­ern­ment ap­proach­es its ren­dezvous with the elec­torate.

Al­so, the rec­om­men­da­tions are be­ing latched on to at a time when there are many unan­swered ques­tions and se­ri­ous con­cerns about the com­mit­ment of the Prime Min­is­ter and her Gov­ern­ment to coun­ter­ing el­e­ments of the crim­i­nal cul­ture. The cred­i­bil­i­ty ques­tions sur­round the in­abil­i­ty and or un­will­ing­ness of the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide be­liev­able/con­vinc­ing re­spons­es to sev­er­al and large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion about the pu­ri­ty and trans­paren­cy of its own ac­tions.

The Resh­mi af­fair, Sec­tion 34, al­le­ga­tions against the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Prime Min­is­ter's con­tin­u­ing lack of ac­tion on and her own ex­pressed "un­aware­ness" of a range of mat­ters hav­ing to do with her Gov­ern­ment and seg­ments of her Cab­i­net.The Prime Min­is­ter and her min­is­ters may be­lieve, like Anan­cy, that they have fooled all the an­i­mals in the for­est. They, how­ev­er, fail to ap­pre­ci­ate, or recog­nise, that dis­sat­is­fac­tion mit­i­gat­ed will resur­face at the cru­cial mo­ment.

But there is a fur­ther is­sue to be re­solved be­fore the Gov­ern­ment can con­vince about its in­ten­tions on the Ryan rec­om­men­da­tions.The Prime Min­is­ter must be trans­par­ent with the coun­try as to why it has be­come nec­es­sary to reach be­yond the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, com­pris­ing the heads of all the ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty forces in the coun­try, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and his tech­nocrats for an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the prob­lem and sug­gest­ed so­lu­tions.

On en­ter­ing of­fice, Mr Warn­er used every op­por­tu­ni­ty to scathe Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs and his plan to fight crime. He sub­se­quent­ly made it dif­fi­cult for Gibbs and Ewats­ki to re­main in of­fice and very at­trac­tive for them to leave ahead of the end of their con­tracts.Mr Warn­er then pro­ceed­ed to promise a crime-fight­ing plan to re­place that of Gibbs. Where is that plan? What ef­fect has it had on re­duc­ing the rate of crime and de­mol­ish­ing the crim­i­nal struc­ture?

The Act­ing CoP has al­so start­ed talk­ing about his own plan of ac­tion to counter crim­i­nal­i­ty.Yet, with­out ra­tio­nal ex­pla­na­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter seems to be ig­nor­ing the state-sec­tor re­sources for an ad­di­tion­al set of mea­sures de­vel­oped by the Ryan Com­mit­tee.As pre­cur­sor to adopt­ing such a strat­e­gy, the Prime Min­is­ter needs to say why this ap­proach. Is it that the NSC, her min­is­ter, the Act­ing CoP and her Cab­i­net are in­ca­pable of find­ing the so­lu­tions?

This ques­tion­ing is not to chal­lenge the bona fides of Prof Ryan the group and their abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy the prob­lems and sug­gest vi­able and ef­fec­tive so­lu­tions.In­deed, hav­ing read the core of the find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions of the Com­mit­tee, it is clear they have done some re­search, re-vis­it­ed sur­veys, opin­ions, rec­om­men­da­tions, read the lit­er­a­ture on crime, gen­der af­fairs, fam­i­ly, ed­u­ca­tion etc. and cap­tured well much of what has been ad­vo­cat­ed over the last cou­ple decades to counter crime.

So the is­sue is not a chal­lenge to Prof Ryan and com­pa­ny. The con­cerns are with the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment and its ca­pa­bil­i­ty to im­ple­ment cru­cial el­e­ments of the so­lu­tions pro­posed. I iden­ti­fy a few of the core so­lu­tions ad­vo­cat­ed which will chal­lenge the com­mit­ment and abil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment.

"Go af­ter those who im­port­ed the guns and il­lic­it drugs; the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty should dili­gent­ly pur­sue white-col­lar crim­i­nals from all sec­tors of the so­ci­ety in­clud­ing law en­force­ment of­fi­cials; more re­sources should be de­ployed for fight­ing cor­rup­tion, mon­ey laun­der­ing and em­bez­zle­ment and checks and bal­ances in­sti­tut­ed to keep high-rank­ing of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing politi­cians, in line.

"Laws should be in­sti­tut­ed to deal with cam­paign fi­nanc­ing, trans­paren­cy in record­ing fi­nanc­ing thus hold­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties to greater ac­count­abil­i­ty."Even Prof Ryan and his team will ad­mit that these are not ter­ri­bly orig­i­nal so­lu­tions. How­ev­er, im­ple­men­ta­tion is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant be­cause im­por­ta­tion and re­lease of the guns and drugs es­tab­lish the foun­da­tion pil­lars of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.As the re­port points out, the im­port busi­ness is not run by the crim­i­nal gangs in Laven­tille.

For 20 years since the fi­nanc­ing of elec­tion cam­paigns be­came an in­vest­ment in gov­ern­ment and so a source of cor­rup­tion, the UNC and PNM have done noth­ing to end it.As re­cent as the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion, both par­ties were well-fund­ed by po­lit­i­cal in­vestors who ex­pect re­turns in the form of con­tracts.

If the Prime Min­is­ter and her Gov­ern­ment are able to demon­strate the ca­pac­i­ty to im­ple­ment the mea­sures, they would be able to gal­vanise pub­lic sup­port. Oth­er­wise the eat-ah-food so­ci­ety would have been of­fi­cial­ly sanc­tioned.