Sascha Wil­son

As Gov­ern­ment grap­ples to stem the scourge of mur­ders in T&T, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, has come to the de­fence of the po­lice ser­vice. Train­ing his guns at the Gov­ern­ment, he said: "No gov­ern­ment can suc­ceed in fight­ing crime if the gov­ern­ment it­self shows that it is not com­mit­ted to law and or­der." Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at his San Fer­nan­do law cham­bers on Wednes­day, Ma­haraj said: "A law­less gov­ern­ment has no moral au­then­tic­i­ty to fight crime. A gov­ern­ment not com­mit­ted to the high stan­dards of con­duct in pub­lic life can­not con­trol crime."

He opined that crime could not be con­trolled if Gov­ern­ment did not take steps to im­prove de­tec­tion rates of se­ri­ous crimes and there­fore, could not cause the pros­e­cu­tion of crim­i­nals. Ma­haraj said to date Gov­ern­ment does not have a holis­tic plan to fight crime. Say­ing that Gov­ern­ment should not put the blame on the po­lice, he re­called that it was the same po­lice ser­vice which con­vert­ed T&T from the rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing the wild west in 1995 to a coun­try where cit­i­zens felt safe at home, at work and when they went out so­cial­ly. "Those who wish to com­mit crimes and those who are com­mit­ting crimes to­day do not have those fears and they be­lieve that Gov­ern­ment is weak and im­po­tent to deal with them," he said.

Ma­haraj al­so said that he is con­sid­er­ing ac­cept­ing an in­vi­ta­tion to join a new non-po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion called Good Gov­er­nance Watch. Say­ing he had no de­sire reen­ter pol­i­tics, Ma­haraj said he was told that the group was a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion com­mit­ted to safe­guard­ing democ­ra­cy and the hu­man and fun­da­men­tals rights of cit­i­zens of T&T. Ex­press­ing con­cern that "the soul of our na­tion is be­ing eat­en away and that we are on the verge of po­lit­i­cal precipice," he said cit­i­zens must get in­volve to res­cue and save the na­tion.