Senior Reporter
rhondor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt
With the murder count on 49, as compared to 70 for the same period last year, Patriotic Front leader Mickela Panday is calling for genuine dialogue among the Government, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar and stakeholders to deal with the issue of crime.
Panday yesterday said she thinks there is no political will to deal with crime.
“I don’t think that they have the political will to do anything about it. I think we need to, first of all, realise that crime is multi-faceted and in order to deal with crime you have to have a holistic approach and that is, of course, you have to look at crime prevention, crime detection, prosecution and I believe that rehabilitation is also very important,” Panday said in a telephone interview.
“In order to address the crime situation, we are also going to have to look at short-term and long-term measures so that the population feels that something is actually being done. I don’t think anything is being done now because crime is simply being used as a political football almost as election season is upon us.”
Panday said the citizenry is already crying out for help, but the question is who is listening.
“And sometimes what ends up happening is that you have persons making decisions in boardrooms who have the financial ability to protect themselves and it’s not the State, when the rest of the citizenry really just feel like sitting ducks.”
“I think there have been many crime plans that’ve been put forward but has there ever been any kind of execution? I don’t think so,” Panday said.
“I believe that the Government and the Opposition, together with stakeholders, need to come together in genuine fashion, with the genuine intention, to solve crime. How can you come up with ideas? It seems as though they don’t have the ideas.”
Noting that DNA legislation was passed when she was in Parliament in 2009 but was still not a main part of the crime-fighting arsenal, she said, “That goes towards detection. When we’re looking at prosecution, what is the situation with the Judiciary and the court system and the backlog? What are we doing to alleviate that problem? So people just hear a set of talking and really no action. You don’t see anything from the Government nor the Opposition, who is supposed to be the government in waiting,” Panday said.