By now, more than halfway through his four-year term as To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary, Far­ley Au­gus­tine should un­der­stand the im­por­tance of be­ing scrupu­lous in his pub­lic state­ments.

How­ev­er, that wasn’t the case on Sat­ur­day night at the To­ba­go Hin­du So­ci­ety’s Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions, when he chose to lam­baste moth­ers for the state of crime on the is­land.

In an ad­dress that ap­peared to be off the cuff, the Chief Sec­re­tary claimed To­ba­go’s moth­ers are not hold­ing their sons ac­count­able and are al­low­ing il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties to con­tin­ue. He al­so ac­cused them of en­joy­ing the fruits of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, draw­ing some un­found­ed par­al­lels be­tween the Di­vali theme of light over dark­ness and the state of To­ba­go house­holds. He con­clud­ed that “light” was ab­sent from homes and com­mu­ni­ties.

It was an ill-ad­vised dis­play of po­lit­i­cal moth­er-blam­ing by an am­bi­tious young of­fice-hold­er who, as a hus­band, fa­ther and To­bag­on­ian, should have known bet­ter.

If he in­tend­ed for his com­ments to set him apart, they cer­tain­ly did but not in the way he might have hoped. Far­ley has now eclipsed all of his po­lit­i­cal coun­ter­parts who have re­sort­ed to the blame game on the is­sue of crime.

To­ba­go is reel­ing from a record high of 25 mur­ders, most of them gang-re­lat­ed, which is the most dif­fi­cult chal­lenge of the Chief Sec­re­tary’s event­ful tenure.

How­ev­er, his views are fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed, not on­ly be­cause fa­thers are omit­ted com­plete­ly but that they place the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty sole­ly on moth­ers to avoid and man­age vi­o­lent male be­hav­iour.

This cul­ture of moth­er-blam­ing that Far­ley has bought in­to is per­va­sive and harm­ful, re­in­forc­ing the stig­ma around sin­gle moth­er­ing and shift­ing at­ten­tion away from the many so­ci­etal ills that con­tribute to crime.

His com­ments sug­gest that he is un­aware of the chal­lenges moth­ers face and how these dif­fi­cul­ties are af­fect­ing them, their fam­i­lies and the larg­er so­ci­ety.

He casts the bur­den on moth­ers for fail­ing to pre­vent harm rather than the men who cause it, and con­ve­nient­ly over­looks the fact that the per­pe­tra­tors of vi­o­lent of­fences be­ing com­mit­ted in To­ba­go are over­whelm­ing­ly male.

It is un­for­tu­nate that, in­stead of lead­ing con­struc­tive di­a­logue on this very crit­i­cal is­sue, Mr Au­gus­tine chose to per­pe­trate an er­ro­neous, sim­plis­tic the­o­ry. It serves on­ly to de­monise women, who are more like­ly to be vic­tims of the crim­i­nals rather than en­ablers.

His com­ments cast a shad­ow over an event that not on­ly cel­e­brat­ed a ma­jor re­li­gious fes­ti­val but ho­n­oured a fel­low To­bag­on­ian who once served in the of­fice he now oc­cu­pies.

Rather than blam­ing and crit­i­cis­ing, the Chief Sec­re­tary could have used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­voke some con­struc­tive thoughts around so­lu­tions to crime, such as ad­dress­ing the re­al root caus­es of vi­o­lent crime.

This is an is­sue that is much big­ger than bad par­ent­ing, with a range of con­tribut­ing fac­tors, in­clud­ing pover­ty, in­equal­i­ty in in­come, hous­ing, health­care, ed­u­ca­tion and the easy avail­abil­i­ty of guns.

Blam­ing and sham­ing par­ents, specif­i­cal­ly moth­ers, con­ve­nient­ly, ig­nores the var­i­ous el­e­ments out­side of the fam­i­ly struc­ture that are caus­es of crime.

What is par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ry­ing is that Mr Au­gus­tine isn’t the on­ly elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive with such a my­opic view of the crime cri­sis, so it is not sur­pris­ing that To­ba­go, as well as Trinidad, is rac­ing to­ward un­prece­dent­ed mur­der records with no so­lu­tions in sight.