Carisa Lee

As the coun­try’s mur­der count has crossed 500, Arch­bish­op Dr Charles Ja­son Gor­don be­lieves the rate of crime and cor­rup­tion in this coun­try is at a dan­ger­ous lev­el. 

He said so dur­ing his ad­dress at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T  (UTT) grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain on Tues­day. 

Gor­don said the many changes in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ters and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers have had lit­tle im­pact on crime. 

“Just yes­ter­day, the chil­dren of Rose Hill had to duck un­der their bench­es and their ta­bles as gun­fire had hap­pened for a minute-and-a-half out­side, trau­ma­tis­ing an en­tire school,” he said. 

The Arch­bish­op, who re­ceived his hon­orary doc­tor­ate from the uni­ver­si­ty, said the mur­der rate has been in the top sev­en in the world and the en­gine to trans­form T&T in­to a safer so­ci­ety is not work­ing. 

“In fact, when it changes, it goes up and not down...we have had 15 mur­ders in a 72-hour pe­ri­od re­cent­ly,” he said. 

Gor­don said many gov­ern­ments were vot­ed out be­cause of the per­cep­tion of cor­rup­tion, but the same peo­ple con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate the po­lit­i­cal land­scape. 

“When it comes to cor­rup­tion, we are num­ber 52 and that’s not a nice num­ber to have. The high­er up you go, the less cor­rupt you are,” he said. 

But the Arch­bish­op said it’s not too late to save T&T.

He told the grad­u­ates lis­ten­ing in that the cul­prits in so­ci­ety are not on­ly the lit­tle boys and girls who are turn­ing to crime at an alarm­ing rate, but every­one who makes bad choic­es for cor­rup­tion, in­dis­ci­pline and medi­oc­rity. 

“You are grad­u­at­ing in­to one of the most dy­nam­ic mo­ments in his­to­ry,” he said. 

He en­cour­aged them to “do on to oth­ers as you would have them do on to you” a gold­en rule he said all na­tions, re­li­gions, cul­tures, and lan­guages teach. 

Gor­don said a val­ue sys­tem based on the gold­en rule should be con­struct­ed in T&T and it may help move this coun­try from the per­il it’s in. 

“We all have a part to play, we all have to make our con­tri­bu­tion,” he said.

“How would you like to be treat­ed if you were in that po­si­tion, and if we un­der­stand that when we have a lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty like Rose Hill, where the gun­fire is so rapid and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties where the ed­u­ca­tion is so poor, then we have to un­der­stand that ed­u­ca­tion has to priv­i­lege our poor­est com­mu­ni­ties,” he added.