The whole of T&T was sure­ly elat­ed with high ex­pectan­cy when At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan bold­ly is­sued a chal­lenge to Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley for a na­tion­al de­bate on crime and the death penal­ty. The sen­si­tive PP Gov­ern­ment has cer­tain­ly heard the cries of an­guish by the vic­tims of crime and their fam­i­lies. Seem­ing­ly, the Op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, with­out giv­ing any sen­si­ble rea­sons, have re­sort­ed to every trick in the book to con­vince a hurt­ing and frus­trat­ed cit­i­zen­ry that amend­ments to rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion are not nec­es­sary and will not de­ter crime. The Gov­ern­ment has stead­fast­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed a "ze­ro tol­er­ance" to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties with lit­tle or no help from the PNM "mash-up crew," whose ap­par­ent mis­sion is to sti­fle, block and sab­o­tage every pro­gres­sive ef­fort. It is quite baf­fling that no PNM mem­bers have seen it fit to give rea­sons for their non-co­op­er­a­tive stance. All cit­i­zens must call on Row­ley to ac­cept this na­tion­al de­bate chal­lenge and stop evad­ing im­por­tant na­tion­al is­sues by hid­ing his head in the sand.

Col­in Ghouralal

Ch­agua­nas