A "PNM mur­der" is how Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has de­scribed the re­cent killing in Laven­tille.

I was dri­ving along the East­ern Main Road on Tues­day evening with my eight-year-old daugh­ter when we heard Jack Warn­er on the news say­ing that this re­cent mur­der in Laven­tille is a PNM mur­der. My daugh­ter then asked me if PNM mur­dered some­body and I was im­me­di­ate­ly em­bar­rassed, as an adult, to have to ex­plain the lev­el of il­lit­er­a­cy that is be­ing spo­ken by some gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

This is an ir­re­spon­si­ble and care­less ac­cu­sa­tion be­ing made in pub­lic against an en­tire po­lit­i­cal par­ty with hun­dreds of thou­sands of cit­i­zens as mem­bers. This at­tack on the PNM with­out pro­vid­ing any sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence to levy this claim is dis­taste­ful and un­ac­cept­able.

The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion must be com­mend­ed for re­spond­ing so swift­ly to the na­tion, alert­ing us that the min­is­ter does not have the au­thor­i­ty to hide crime sta­tis­tics. This type of be­hav­iour threat­ens the democ­ra­cy of Trinidad and To­ba­go in ref­er­ence to the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

Pub­lic of­fi­cials must be guid­ed by their oath of of­fice and their so­cial and moral re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the na­tion. In this re­gard I would hope that the min­is­ter would apol­o­gise to the na­tion and the PNM for this harsh and base­less ac­cu­sa­tion that is tied to a crim­i­nal act. This does noth­ing pos­i­tive for the fam­i­ly and na­tion that is mourn­ing this young man's death.

Ronald Hug­gins

St Joseph