JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, Mick­ela Pan­day, says the coun­try should not have to de­pend on the US to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Pan­day took is­sue with Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der say­ing that the coun­try has ben­e­fit­ed from the pres­ence of US war­ships in the re­gion, as it has curbed gun and drug traf­fick­ing.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre in Aripo on Wednes­day, Alexan­der said, “There is great hes­i­ta­tion in per­sons bring­ing in guns, il­le­gal drugs and per­form­ing this act of hu­man traf­fick­ing. That much I can tell you. I con­tin­ue to show­er praise on them. Our bor­ders were very porous over the years, and we have some friends or part­ners with us, that is as­sist­ing with that.”

But in her post, Pan­day said while the coun­try should be grate­ful, it must al­so be re­al­is­tic. She ques­tioned what would hap­pen af­ter the US troops leave, say­ing that the coun­try “can­not out­source its se­cu­ri­ty.”

“Where is the long-term plan to se­cure our bor­ders, dis­man­tle traf­fick­ing net­works, pro­tect women and chil­dren, strength­en in­tel­li­gence and re­store trust in law en­force­ment? If the safe­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­pends en­tire­ly on the pres­ence of an­oth­er coun­try, then we do not have a se­cu­ri­ty plan; we have a de­pen­den­cy. And that is not sus­tain­able, not re­spon­si­ble and cer­tain­ly not lead­er­ship.”

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith agreed with Alexan­der that there are tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to US troops be­ing in the re­gion. But he al­so agreed with Pan­day that there must be a plan when the US ex­its.

“We can’t just put all our eggs in the Unit­ed States bas­ket and hope that the Unit­ed States will be the be-all and end-all to re­duce crime and to make peo­ple feel safe; it takes a lot more. So yes, we do need to start putting things in place in prepa­ra­tion for that with­draw­al if and when it ever hap­pens, and it cer­tain­ly can­not be a min­is­ter stat­ing that there’s a ten-point crime plan, but I will tell you about it lat­er on.”

He added that the State of Emer­gency will end, and those cur­rent­ly held may be re­leased, so it would be wise to plan ahead.

And for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les said he ful­ly agreed with Pan­day. He said the Op­po­si­tion has called for a de­tailed an­ti-crime plan since the Gov­ern­ment as­sumed of­fice, but to date, there have been no an­swers.

“The Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty doesn’t even know whether we have war­ships in our na­tion­al wa­ters (if we are to take him se­ri­ous­ly). His con­duct must not be seen in iso­la­tion. It must be seen from a con­tex­tu­al per­spec­tive, and that will tell you that he is out of his depths,” he said in a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia.