There have been strong re­ac­tions to the head­line in Sat­ur­day’s T&T Guardian, Vic­to­ry for Gang­sters. That is not sur­pris­ing giv­en the views that have been ex­pressed on ei­ther side of this is­sue, par­tic­u­lar­ly from those hold­ing par­ti­san po­si­tions.

This me­dia house has tak­en a firm po­si­tion not to take po­lit­i­cal sides but to re­port hon­est­ly and clear­ly on the out­come of the de­bate that took place in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the An­ti-Gang Bill, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause af­ter three hours of de­bate and an un­usu­al­ly brief com­mit­tee stage, this coun­try is back to square one on leg­is­la­tion that is a crit­i­cal el­e­ment in the bat­tle against crim­i­nal gangs.

Guardian Me­dia stands firm­ly on the side of the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cit­i­zens. It is re­gret­table that this op­por­tu­ni­ty for bi­par­ti­san­ship, for a set­ting aside of po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences, came to nought.

All of the 19 Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MPs who ab­stained from vot­ing on Fri­day have guar­an­teed that by month-end there will be no leg­isla­tive frame­work to fight crim­i­nal gangs when the cur­rent law ex­pires.

The bill, which re­quired a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty, was giv­en a 30-month sun­set clause in 2018 and the Gov­ern­ment was hop­ing to get a fur­ther ex­ten­sion on Fri­day. In­stead, for the sec­ond time in five years, the Op­po­si­tion has failed to sup­port the very leg­is­la­tion that it in­tro­duced ear­ly in the term of its Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2011.

Dur­ing the de­bate, Op­po­si­tion MPs, no­tably Na­pari­ma rep­re­sen­ta­tive Rod­ney Charles and San Juan/Barataria’s Sad­dam Ho­sein, pas­sion­ate­ly ar­gued that the leg­is­la­tion had lit­tle im­pact on the high lev­els of crime in the coun­try. Charles even claimed that the re­duc­tion in homi­cides this year was most­ly due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

What T&T now awaits are vi­able al­ter­na­tives that can be swift­ly de­bat­ed and passed to stop the dead­ly ram­page of gang­sters who ac­count for most of the mur­ders and oth­er vi­o­lent crimes com­mit­ted in this coun­try.

If, as the Op­po­si­tion con­tends, the bill was flawed and in­ef­fec­tive, they should come up with rec­om­men­da­tions for the strong an­ti-gang law that T&T ur­gent­ly needs. Pol­i­tics must not stand in the way of pass­ing strong an­ti-crime laws.

Ear­li­er this year the Op­po­si­tion opt­ed not to sup­port a bill to de­ny bail for 120 days to any­one caught in il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of mil­i­tary-grade weapons. The Bail (Amend­ment) (No 2) Bill 2019 was de­feat­ed by a mar­gin of 19 votes for, ze­ro votes against, and 19 ab­sten­tions. Fri­day's se­quence of events was eeri­ly sim­i­lar.

In­stead of flex­ing their po­lit­i­cal mus­cles and per­sist­ing with these ef­forts at leg­isla­tive brinks­man­ship every time a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty is re­quired, this na­tion’s law­mak­ers need to dis­play pa­tri­o­tism and ma­tu­ri­ty by work­ing to­geth­er to im­ple­ment laws to ef­fec­tive­ly fight crime.

The crim­i­nals have been al­lowed the up­per hand for far too long and a heavy price has been paid, at the ex­pense of the econ­o­my and the well-be­ing of so­ci­ety.

It is time for Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion to put coun­try be­fore par­ty and get down to work on re­viv­ing, strength­en­ing, and pass­ing the de­feat­ed An­ti-Gang and Bail (Amend­ment) Bills.