“No change can be made out­side of the Par­lia­ment with re­spect to the con­tent of this re­port,” said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in ref­er­enc­ing the res­ur­rect­ed 2017 TTPS Man­pow­er Au­dit Re­port, to in­dict the Op­po­si­tion for re­fus­ing to sup­port an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion brought by the Gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, chair­man of the said 2017 Man­pow­er Com­mis­sion in­to the TTPS, crim­i­nol­o­gist, Prof Ramesh De­osaran, sub­se­quent­ly told the T&T Guardian the Gov­ern­ment must seek to adopt and im­ple­ment all 82 rec­om­men­da­tions in the re­port. He la­belled the rec­om­men­da­tion to re­form the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion the most im­por­tant.

“The crime fight is there. If you are bring­ing in for­eign as­sis­tance, the CIA and the FBI, you will have to have a very prop­er, ef­fec­tive tem­plate on which to rest that as­sis­tance, which means you have to do some work with your own po­lice ser­vice,” is the view of the for­mer UWI crim­i­nol­o­gist.

“That is where the bot­tom line in im­ple­men­ta­tion and ex­e­cu­tion ex­ists,” the crim­i­nol­o­gist made known af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter’s news con­fer­ence.

The cir­cum­stances of the present are that the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing des­per­ate­ly to bring re­lief to a coun­try un­der siege from crim­i­nals, and to do so with on­ly 12 to 15 months left of its term. If it can­not do so through leg­isla­tive and oth­er mea­sures, then its cho­sen op­tion is to shift re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the Op­po­si­tion.

As des­per­ate as Gov­ern­ment, is the Op­po­si­tion Leader, whose po­lit­i­cal ca­reer hangs on staunch­ing the flow of de­feats she has led her par­ty in­to, es­pe­cial­ly in gen­er­al elec­tions.

What is cer­tain is that when the cam­paign be­gins for­mal­ly, the onus will be on Gov­ern­ment to tan­gi­bly show it has at least been break­ing in­to the gangs and dis­rupt­ing the car­tels which are said to be the fi­nanciers and ma­jor ben­e­fi­cia­ries of crime in the coun­try.

That the Prime Min­is­ter res­ur­rect­ed the De­osaran Man­pow­er Re­port to sup­port his ar­gu­ment of an in­ef­fi­cient, de­formed and dys­func­tion­al po­lice ser­vice, and the re­fusal of the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port leg­is­la­tion to counter crime, is a dis­play of des­per­a­tion.

PM Row­ley’s ef­forts to shift the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the Op­po­si­tion al­so con­trasts with his re­fusal to heap re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, for her fail­ure at ef­fec­tive plan­ning and the in­abil­i­ty to cor­ner the crim­i­nals and their gangs with qual­i­ty po­lice work.

Un­less the Prime Min­is­ter brings specifics about the leg­isla­tive ob­struc­tion by the Op­po­si­tion to the bills placed be­fore the Par­lia­ment, what could have been achieved if passed, and in­deed, ex­am­ples of the suc­cess­es of oth­er re­lat­ed pieces of leg­is­la­tion, he will have to live with the con­clu­sion of many that his was an at­tempt at po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da and eva­sion of his prime min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

More­over, and as point­ed out by Pro­fes­sor De­osaran, there are 82 an­ti-crime rec­om­men­da­tions in the re­port. The Prime Min­is­ter need­ed to point to those which have been adopt­ed and im­ple­ment­ed, and suc­cess­es and fail­ures of those mea­sures.

But what­ev­er the block­age to pass leg­is­la­tion in the Par­lia­ment, the on-the-ground in­abil­i­ty to root out the crim­i­nal gangs, to turn young peo­ple away from a life of crime, and to in­ter­vene in the fi­nanc­ing and im­por­ta­tion of weapons and the drugs trade, ram­pant crim­i­nal­i­ty must be con­sid­ered as po­lit­i­cal fail­ure of the Gov­ern­ment.