The less-than-cor­dial re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) com­pli­cates the re­sponse to the re­cent spike in mur­ders in To­ba­go.

Not even halfway through the year, the is­land has al­ready record­ed ten mur­ders, most of them gang-re­lat­ed, and seems on a fast track to sur­pass­ing the 14 mur­ders for all of 2023.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine have ex­pressed con­cern about the sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, this is a mat­ter in which ac­tion, not talk, is ur­gent­ly re­quired, prefer­ably with a uni­fied ap­proach.

It can­not be To­ba­go ver­sus Trinidad. Vi­o­lent crime is the biggest prob­lem fac­ing T&T and the na­tion’s best crime-fight­ing ef­forts and re­sources must be di­rect­ed at this com­mon en­e­my.

The gang war­fare now be­ing waged on To­ba­go soil is one as­pect of the long­stand­ing na­tion­al cri­sis that has been chal­leng­ing the coun­try’s law en­force­ment and in­tel­li­gence agen­cies since the 1980s.

The sug­ges­tion that crim­i­nals from Trinidad have in­fil­trat­ed and taint­ed the once safe and serene sis­ter is­land with law­less­ness and vi­o­lence is nei­ther an ac­cu­rate as­sess­ment of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, nor is it help­ful in tack­ling this prob­lem.

Find­ing so­lu­tions to the uptick in mur­ders in To­ba­go and es­ca­lat­ing crime na­tion­wide re­quires set­ting aside po­lit­i­cal and adopt­ing a clear-head­ed, bi­par­ti­san ap­proach — some­thing the two po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions are yet to demon­strate.

How­ev­er, last week­end’s fa­tal shoot­ing of Samuel ‘In­di­an’ Ma­haraj in Whim vil­lage, should be a strong enough wake-up call to the Gov­ern­ment and the THA.

Based on their re­cent ut­ter­ances, the two po­lit­i­cal lead­ers don’t seem averse to join­ing forces against the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

On his re­turn from Ghana and In­dia on Sun­day, Dr Row­ley said his ad­min­is­tra­tion is “pre­pared to work with any and all cit­i­zens, agen­cies and en­ti­ties to en­sure that the crim­i­nals do not pre­vail and con­tin­ue to ter­rorise us in­def­i­nite­ly”.

Mr Au­gus­tine, for his part, spoke re­cent­ly about the need for a “strong foun­da­tion of col­lec­tive so­cial ac­tion against crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal con­duct where we know they ex­ist”.

So it is a bit wor­ry­ing that they have not yet met to work out a joint re­sponse to the re­cent mur­ders in To­ba­go.

Too much is at stake, in­clud­ing To­ba­go’s tourism-de­pen­dent econ­o­my, for there to be any de­lays in de­liv­er­ing a strong re­sponse to the emerg­ing gang vi­o­lence.

Past ex­pe­ri­ences with vi­o­lent crime in To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly those oc­ca­sions when tourists were the vic­tims, putting a ter­ri­ble stain on the once peace­ful and beau­ti­ful is­land, should be strong enough mo­ti­va­tion to con­front this is­sue head-on.

To­ba­go tourism has not yet ful­ly re­cov­ered from a spate of in­ci­dents be­tween 2008 and 2009, in­clud­ing the mur­ders of a Swedish cou­ple in their ho­tel room. The most se­vere reper­cus­sions fol­lowed the vi­o­lent rob­bery of British cou­ple Pe­ter and Muri­um Greene, who sub­se­quent­ly be­gan a well-pub­li­cised cam­paign for a boy­cott of the is­land af­ter their hor­ri­ble 2009 ex­pe­ri­ence.

With mur­ders quick­ly be­com­ing a ma­jor prob­lem, there could be re­peats of these in­ci­dents, with all of the ac­com­pa­ny­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences.

This coun­try has all the nec­es­sary in­gre­di­ents for an ex­cel­lent tourism prod­uct— cul­ture, cui­sine, a myr­i­ad of an­nu­al fes­ti­vals and two car­ni­vals. But crime, es­pe­cial­ly vi­o­lent crime, is a de­ter­rent to the de­vel­op­ment of that in­dus­try in­to a ma­jor dri­ver of the T&T econ­o­my.

That is why the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA should join forces to con­front this na­tion­al cri­sis.