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Monday, May 19, 2025

Making political ‘mas’ with crime; PolSC and Erla month-end

by

463 days ago
20240210
Gail Alexander

Gail Alexander

Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are hav­ing a break now, but post-Car­ni­val next week it’s back to work—on nom­i­na­tions for deputy po­lice com­mis­sion­ers, as se­cu­ri­ty con­tin­ues to be on the front burn­er.

Cur­rent­ly though, some are in the Car­ni­val mix. In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Helon Fran­cis is on a stage as big as the Sen­ate at to­mor­row’s Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nals. He’s moved from his 2023 pa­trio-an­them “Mighty” to 2024 re­al­i­ties of “Rep­re­sent­ing We”—a wit­ty, pithy re­flec­tion on T&T pol­i­tics, hav­ing paid close at­ten­tion dur­ing his five months in Sen­ate.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sig­nalled Tues­day that he’ll be around, but not as mas­quer­ad­er. Plan­ning Min­is­ter Pen­ny Beck­les will be in Ari­ma. UNC MP Van­dana Mo­hit’s lead­ing her J’Ou­vert band.

Work’s still on though: ju­bi­lant Car­ni­val at­mos­phere jux­ta­posed with oil lit­er­al­ly on To­ba­go’s trou­bled wa­ters and wor­ri­some im­pli­ca­tions: reef de­struc­tion by the cul­prit “Gulf­stream” ves­sel’s ground­ing, ma­rine life de­struc­tion, be­fouled tourism/lo­ca­tions. And grave test for Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s THA.

Car­ni­val-wise, scruti­ny’s on se­cu­ri­ty, whether crime-shy cit­i­zens sub­scribe more to Mi­cal Te­ja’s “No Place Like Ho-oome” cho­rus than his “DNA” fete beck­on­ing, vis­i­tor turnout and how—with a low­er buzz - na­tion­al fete rep­u­ta­tion fares amidst na­tion­al prob­lem rav­ages.

If PM Row­ley’s Tues­day brief­ing raised ex­pec­ta­tion of new na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty an­nounce­ments, what was de­liv­ered trig­gered more con­cern. With DCP ap­point­ments, the im­me­di­ate ma­jor de­vel­op­ment, it re­mains ahead what so­lu­tions for the TTPS their ex­per­tise brings.

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s un­der­per­for­mance rep­re­sent­ed a grim enough dilem­ma for an em­bat­tled PM fac­ing elec­tion in 18 months to reach all the way back to 2017 to bran­dish the De­osaran Au­dit Re­port on TTPS is­sues that were known. In­deed: with the CoP among re­port au­thors. Apart from han­dling eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, pan­dem­ic cri­sis and re­cov­ery changes, the fact that the re­port’s be­ing pro­mot­ed now—af­ter of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion that CoPs since 2018 hadn’t met tar­gets—still raised the in­con­ve­nient truth of whether it’s mere­ly red her­ring/cov­er. First, as pur­port­ed sub­ject mat­ter for the Gov­ern­ment/Op­po­si­tion an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tion. Sec­ond­ly, the con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form Row­ley cit­ed as be­ing nec­es­sary to im­ple­ment some rec­om­men­da­tions, now a chal­lenge pub­licly is­sued to UNC.

Be­yond Row­ley’s ac­knowl­edge­ment of the CoP’s “dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, dif­fi­cult job and it didn’t mean one should throw the ba­by out with the bath­wa­ter”, he’s passed the buck of CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s man­age­ment of TTPS mat­ters (and fu­ture) to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC).

With Car­ni­val se­cu­ri­ty an­oth­er test, PolSC awaits month-end—as the CoP was first ap­point­ed Feb­ru­ary 2023—to do her per­for­mance ap­praisal. It’s ahead what hap­pens post-ap­praisal af­ter out­comes; al­so in the three months to­wards the May an­niver­sary of the ex­ten­sion of her ap­point­ment. And what Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion will be be­yond May.

Con­sid­er­ing the ra­tio­nale na­ture of Row­ley’s state­ments, the re­peat­ed queries which he ini­tial­ly re­buffed about an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tions with UNC would have af­ford­ed a po­lit­i­cal life­line, had he giv­en pos­i­tive re­ply ear­li­er than even­tu­al­ly con­ced­ing “at an ap­pro­pri­ate time maybe...”

Af­ter the UNC “wined” all over the con­sul­ta­tion is­sue, pos­i­tive re­ply would have brought some bal­ance to the play, pro­vid­ing tan­gi­ble (lead­er­ship) move­ment on as­pects of T&T’s key burn­ing is­sue on which peo­ple want ac­tion. Cor­rect­ly—from both sides.

The hope­less­ness Row­ley was warned of on Tues­day is re­al. Even Mon­day’s “ram” PNM fete can’t de­tract from that.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar should have al­so said re­cent­ly, if the de­tailed in­for­ma­tion she’s giv­en on caus­es of crime—Colom­bian car­tels work­ing with T&T gangs/busi­ness­peo­ple re­gard­ing drugs and guns—was shared with au­thor­i­ties, if her ad­min­is­tra­tion knew of/did any­thing on the prob­lems she said were “left to fes­ter for years”, and if, with that deep knowl­edge, she’ll sup­port re­lief mea­sures for cit­i­zens—be­yond po­lit­i­cal­ly weapon­is­ing crime as elec­tion ve­hi­cle to­wards White­hall.

The UNC will be held firm­ly to deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal’s promise that it’ll solve the crime prob­lem in six months. Mooni­lal’s views last Sun­day against the PolSC—and by ex­ten­sion their nom­i­na­tion of the DCPs—has set the stage re­gard­ing those DCPs and to neu­tralise the PolSC’s judge­ment.

With post-Car­ni­val “fire” ahead, Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans may wish to stand as strong as Bun­ji, be as much a trouper as Patrice and be able to wine back on po­lit­i­cal blows as en­er­get­i­cal­ly as mas­quer­aders are do­ing—here­on.


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