JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ad­dress the na­tion di­rect­ly, fol­low­ing a string of vi­o­lent crimes in­clud­ing the mur­der of a po­lice of­fi­cer at a mu­nic­i­pal sta­tion dur­ing a gun theft and the coun­try’s first quadru­ple homi­cide for the year.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Beck­les said the Prime Min­is­ter must stop re­ly­ing on so­cial me­dia and speak to the pub­lic in a for­mal set­ting.

“The Prime Min­is­ter can­not con­tin­ue to gov­ern us­ing Tik­Tok, What­sApp, email, Face­book. That is not good enough. We want the Prime Min­is­ter to make her­self avail­able to the me­dia.”

Beck­les said, to her rec­ol­lec­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter’s last na­tion­al ad­dress was in June of last year. She said the mur­der of Cor­po­ral Anusha Ever­s­ley on Sun­day in par­tic­u­lar de­mands a di­rect state­ment to the na­tion rather than a so­cial me­dia post.

Fol­low­ing the killing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued a Face­book state­ment de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as an “in­ter­nal be­tray­al” and said the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) would pro­vide full sup­port to the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice, San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris and the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion. She al­so not­ed a dis­tinc­tion be­tween mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers and mem­bers of the TTPS.

Beck­les, how­ev­er, main­tained her call for greater vis­i­bil­i­ty from the Prime Min­is­ter.

“I’m call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter, please, we are in cri­sis; the coun­try is in chaos. The pub­lic wants to see you, they want to hear you,” she said.

She con­trast­ed the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, ac­cus­ing the Prime Min­is­ter of over­ex­po­sure dur­ing that pe­ri­od and in­suf­fi­cient en­gage­ment now.

“Where is the de­liv­ery on crime? Where are all these promis­es that were made?” she asked.

On the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy, Beck­les said the State of Emer­gency has failed and ar­gued that the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion, which did not se­cure the re­quired par­lia­men­tary sup­port, is al­so in­suf­fi­cient.

She not­ed that while the Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ed an ear­li­er ex­ten­sion of the mea­sure, it could not con­tin­ue to do so.

“A State of Emer­gency is not a crime plan. It is not a crime strat­e­gy. The pub­lic un­der­stands that clear­ly,” Beck­les said.

Beck­les al­so re­it­er­at­ed that the Op­po­si­tion is will­ing to en­gage the Gov­ern­ment on crime, but stressed that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for lead­er­ship rests with the ad­min­is­tra­tion. She added that ad­dress­ing crime must in­volve not on­ly the State but al­so in­sti­tu­tions such as the church, fam­i­lies and the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.