Clevon Raphael

At this crit­i­cal junc­ture in the coun­try's life with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the out-of-con­trol crime sit­u­a­tion it is im­per­a­tive that every cit­i­zen get on board with and sup­port the au­thor­i­ties in their re­lent­less ef­forts at com­ing to grip with this gross­ly un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion.Now, as the say­ing goes, is the time for all good cit­i­zens to come to the aid of Trinidad and To­ba­go re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion be­cause as we all know, the gun-tot­ing ban­dits do not dis­crim­i­nate when they are putting down their "wuk."

All man jack is li­able to feel the un­pro­voked wrath of the ban­dits whose job it is to de­prive hard work­ing cit­i­zens of what we sweat­ed for in the pur­suit of pro­vid­ing for our fam­i­lies and oth­ers who de­pend on us.That is their job and that is one of the rea­sons why I do not share the the­o­ry that pover­ty is the main fac­tor in the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties of these peo­ple who, as we have been wit­ness­ing so painful­ly, the grue­some na­ture of ex­e­cut­ing their vic­tims is sec­ond-na­ture.

Age and gen­der make no dif­fer­ence when they come to get you; that is it. Your life num­ber has been pre­ma­ture­ly called.

The gov­ern­ment has been try­ing to deal with this crime prob­lem as oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tions have done and like those of the past, the PP is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing great dif­fi­cul­ty in con­tain­ing the se­ri­ous crime sce­nario, and al­though this has gone down ac­cord­ing to the fig­ures giv­en by the po­lice ex­ec­u­tive, as long as the riv­er of wast­ed hu­man blood con­tin­ues to flow in this wan­ton man­ner, the peo­ple would not feel safe, and with good rea­son.

Ku­dos should be giv­en to the po­lice for at least achiev­ing some­thing pos­i­tive in this re­lent­less bat­tle with the law­less bunch but the gov­ern­ment still has some ways to go in or­der to bring a bit of com­fort to us law abid­ing cit­i­zens who de­serve to en­joy the fruits of our hard labour and should not have to be look­ing over our shoul­ders as we go along our dai­ly af­fairs whether at school, work or at play.

In their on­go­ing ef­forts to put a han­dle on this can­cer the gov­ern­ment has tak­en to par­lia­ment leg­is­la­tion to give le­gal cov­er­age to sol­diers par­tic­i­pat­ing in joint pa­trols with our po­lice of­fi­cers, some­thing that has been in op­er­a­tion al­ready for sev­er­al years with no com­plaints from cit­i­zens far as I can re­call.

The leg­is­la­tion which was passed in the Low­er House was giv­en easy pas­sage in that the gov­ern­ment is nu­mer­i­cal­ly stronger than the op­po­si­tion PNM, but the PNM which for some strange rea­son seems to be want­i­ng to stop frus­trate the gov­ern­ment in its moves to deal with the crime prob­lem, is ve­he­ment­ly against the pro­posed mea­sure.

The de­bate was tak­en to the Up­per House where it must be ap­proved for it to be put on the statute books and here the PNM mem­bers launched a vi­cious at­tack on the gov­ern­ment's al­leged ul­te­ri­or mo­tives for us­ing the sol­diers with the po­lice, which would be re­viewed in two years if it should be­come law.

Be­cause of the strong an­ti views ex­pressed by the Op­po­si­tion PNM Sen­a­tors and those of the four In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors who spoke on the Bill so far, gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to pull it back while they con­sid­er the po­si­tions adopt­ed by mem­bers of both bench­es.

This move by gov­ern­ment is the essence of par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy at work and the crit­i­cism was com­plete­ly disin­gen­u­ous, es­pe­cial­ly from the Op­po­si­tion, who ap­par­ent­ly seem to think that they are im­mune from the bul­lets and oth­er lethal weapons in the ban­dits' for­mi­da­ble ar­se­nal, as they do not live in the hot spot ar­eas they rep­re­sent in the Low­er House.

And dear read­ers, be­cause of what is deemed the most crit­i­cal is­sue fac­ing this gov­ern­ment and as I said ear­li­er now is the time for all good men and women to come to the res­cue of our home­land, and those who seem not in favour of do­ing so and are giv­ing tac­it sup­port to the evil-do­ers among us, I am go­ing to call them out as en­e­mies of the peo­ple.

Space does not al­low me at this time to do so to­day al­though I have a list pre­pared, just as I did three years ago, to be use to­day and you my dear read­ers are in­vit­ed to nom­i­nate those who you feel are en­e­mies of the peo­ple, be they politi­cians, labour lead­ers, re­li­gious lead­ers, jour­nal­ists, any­one in a lead­er­ship role na­tion­al­ly.

There are on­ly two rules: name the per­son(s) and your rea­son(s) why they should be nom­i­nat­ed for such dis­hon­ourable ti­tle and by their words and deeds we shall recog­nise them.

�2 Next week: first set of en­e­mies of the peo­ple.