Corey Con­nel­ly

In­sta­bil­i­ty with­in the fam­i­ly has con­tributed, in some mea­sure, to the high lev­els of crime per­pe­trat­ing T&T, says out­go­ing Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador Roy Austin. He made the state­ment yes­ter­day in an ad­dress dur­ing a farewell lun­cheon host­ed by the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs at Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain. Austin, a crim­i­nol­o­gist, di­rect­ed his com­ments main­ly to­ward men in so­ci­ety, lament­ing that many of them did not take full ad­van­tage of ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties.

He re­called that as a young man he had de­spised the idea of fe­male stu­dents beat­ing him in school cours­es. "We have to start so­cial­is­ing our young men to get that sort of pride so that the girls do not beat them," he said. Austin, who took up du­ties as am­bas­sador in Oc­to­ber 2001, said the rule of law in T&T had been un­der se­ri­ous threat for some time. He not­ed that the US had al­so grap­pled with a high crime rate. "There was a time when crime had last­ed much longer than we want­ed it to. But in the mid-1990s, we start­ed to bring the crime rate down. It is now fluc­tu­at­ing," Austin said. He ex­pressed hope, how­ev­er, that the crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T would be brought un­der con­trol with­in a few years. Like Amer­i­ca, Austin said he was al­ways im­pressed by the val­ue T&T placed on its de­mo­c­ra­t­ic way of life. He said it was some­thing peo­ple should not take for grant­ed.

"No coun­try is a per­fect democ­ra­cy. Some are slight­ly bet­ter at it than oth­ers. With­out the prac­tice, the coun­try will suf­fer in many re­spects," Austin said, not­ing that hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism was the most im­por­tant as­pect of a democ­ra­cy. He said the US was of­ten re­gard­ed as be­ing too pushy be­cause of its in­sis­tence on democ­ra­cy. On the eco­nom­ic front, Austin said T&T had done well. He added that while there were le­git­i­mate con­cerns about the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis, "I'm sure the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to bring it to an end." Among those at­tend­ing the event were Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Paula Gopee-Scoon, Austin's wife Glyn­nis, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ed­wina Lea­cock, Am­bas­sadors John Don­ald­son and Cuth­bert Joseph, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants' As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud and mem­bers of the diplo­mat­ic corps.