Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley last week introduced a new crime-fighting strategy to T&T: ask the criminals to not commit crimes.
In a statement from the Office of the Prime Minister, Dr Rowley said, "I want to appeal to all those young persons who might be influenced by or attracted to violent criminal activity to consider the frequency with which such activities end in grief not only for their families but for the wider national community, to reflect on alternatives which would provide more acceptable outcomes to their valuable lives."
It's so simple that I wondered why no one had ever thought of this approach before. I imagined a gang member, sitting down to eat some KFC and watch fat women fight, reading Dr Rowley's eloquent words and thinking, "Yeah, boy, dat man gyul/chile/mudder go really feel ah how if I cap 13 bullet in he so-and-so head. And the Prime Minister tink I valuable!"
Now some of you might consider this is an unlikely scenario, but you are ignoring the fact that the communities with the highest crime rates in Trinidad are the same places which most staunchly vote PNM. Nevertheless, there is an obvious weakness with the Rowley crime-fighting strategy: suppose the young people who might be attracted to violent crime don't read the newspapers? Or can't read the statement on the OPM's website because their Internet is down and the company can't send a repair crew because its technicians don't want to be murdered? Or can't read words with more than three letters?
This is why every citizen should clip or print or tattoo Dr Rowley's statement so that, if ever they are robbed or raped or murdered, they can tell the robber or rapist or killer that the Prime Minister requested that they not do that. I mean, I'm sure that people beg for their lives all the time when attacked by criminals, but pleading is a lot more persuasive when supported by the leader of the PNM.
I myself have devoted a lot of thought to crime-fighting policies, but the best I could come up with was ending URP funding, repealing the minimum wage, and not assassinating witnesses against police officers. I know�pathetic, right?
In my own defence, though, I do understand that such measures are unworkable, if only because politicians need the votes of criminals, skettels and religious leaders in order to get into government and drive cars that cost more than their annual salaries even without tax. Of course, that is not a crime, as all Pan Trinbago board members would say.
So I am grateful to Dr Rowley for demonstrating this new criminal strategy, and indeed I have begun wondering how I can apply it to my own profession as a writer. In economics, for example, I could send out this exhortation: "I want to appeal to all those UWI economists who might be influenced by or attracted to make analyses of social issues like crime to consider the frequency with which such commentary asserts that economic growth will reduce murders when, in fact, between 2003 and 2008 the economy grew between two to five per cent annually and the homicide rate in that same period rose 300 per cent, and consider alternatives to making the wider national community even more misinformed than they already are."
Or, "I want to appeal to all those academics who might be influenced by or attracted by corruption to consider to consider the frequency with which you use bogus statistics to teach young people politically correct claims for the financial gain of becoming a university administrator and to consider the frequency of your ad hominem responses instead of alternatives like providing acceptable sources for your stats hence proving that your critics are fools."
Indeed, I can even use PNM leader Dr Rowley's appeal to appeal to Prime Minister Dr Rowley: "I want to appeal to all those politicians who describe as a 'broad and simplistic statement ...not supported by fact' the assertion that Trinidad has the highest per capita rate of Isis recruits in the Western hemisphere to read the 2016 study by John McCoy and W Andy Knight which describes 'the unique historical legacy of radicalism, extremism and insurrection among T&T's Islamists; the country's markedly high levels of extremist travellers on a per capita basis and the high rate of religious converts among those travellers,' and to consider the frequency with which such denials end in child abuse, coup attempts and beards."
I am confident that, with this new strategy, T&T should by month-end see a marked reduction in both murders and selfies.
Kevin Baldeosingh is a professional writer, author of three novels, and co-author of a Caribbean history textbook.