While I com­mend the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter on his re­cent suc­cess­es in Laven­tille and his deep de­ter­mi­na­tion and hard work in curb­ing crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go, I must say that his re­cent com­ments on the Laven­tille mur­der came off as dis­taste­ful. I think his choic­es of words were un­for­tu­nate and he was mis­un­der­stood.

I recog­nise and great­ly ap­pre­ci­ate his ef­forts; he has al­ways been there for his con­stituents and cit­i­zens, whether as then works and in­fra­struc­ture min­is­ter or as min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, his re­cent com­ments seemed a bit emo­tion­al and un­nec­es­sary. I don't think it was clever of him to clas­si­fy the mur­der as a PNM mur­der.

We are ac­cus­tomed to the usu­al ac­cu­sa­tions thrown by each par­ty but I think this one went out of hand. While it may be true that if the PNM did in fact sup­port the min­is­ter's crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives, re­gard­less of their dif­fer­ences, and ex­tend­ed their sup­port and mo­ti­va­tion to their con­stituents then maybe, just maybe, this mur­der could have been avoid­ed.

I sup­port Warn­er in his crime plans but he needs to sim­mer down a bit. We ap­pre­ci­ate his pas­sion but he needs to think twice be­fore he talks, and re­main fo­cused. Mean­while, let's re­al­ly get down to work and save our beau­ti­ful coun­try as crime is every­body's busi­ness.

Tama­ra Bernard

via e-mail