Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Three po­lit­i­cal par­ties are ques­tion­ing how the UNC could cam­paign on promis­es to fight crime, yet now re­sort to what they de­scribe as old and failed PNM tac­tics, such as de­clar­ing a State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front Po­lit­i­cal Leader Mick­ela Pan­day strong­ly crit­i­cised the SoE, ar­gu­ing that it is nei­ther a crime plan nor a cure.

Pan­day posit­ed, “The cit­i­zens of this coun­try de­serve safe­ty, not speech­es. They de­serve ac­tion, not ex­cus­es. And they de­serve a gov­ern­ment with the vi­sion and courage to lead, not just re­peat.”

The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front’s leader de­scribed the SoE as a mere “cir­cuit break­er” that fails to tack­le the root caus­es of crime.

“With­out se­ri­ous re­forms, prison over­sight, an­ti-cor­rup­tion crack­downs, youth in­ter­ven­tion, and re­al gun con­trol, this will con­tin­ue to be our re­al­i­ty. More fear, more head­lines, and no way for­ward,” Pan­day con­tend­ed.

She said that an SoE was a tac­ti­cal con­tain­ment tool, use­ful for dis­rupt­ing im­me­di­ate threats, re­lo­cat­ing in­mates, and fa­cil­i­tat­ing raids. But it is not a long-term so­lu­tion, nor does it of­fer com­fort to the count­less fam­i­lies across the coun­try who live in dai­ly fear.

“If you cam­paign on crime, the peo­ple ex­pect ac­tion, not fear­mon­ger­ing and emp­ty promis­es,” Pan­day as­sert­ed.

Mean­while, the All Peo­ple’s Par­ty (APP) led by Kezel Jack­son de­scribed the SoE as “an­oth­er plas­ter again”.

Jack­son told Guardian Me­dia, “Every­body’s try­ing to put a plas­ter on­to the wound, but the wound runs deep­er than the sur­face.” She said there were a lot of so­cio-psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors that are the breed­ing ground of these crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. “But we need to take the bull by the horns, but every­body wants to take the bull by the neck. So you see this as just a plas­ter, as you said, a short-term stop­gap mea­sure.”

She de­scribed crime as a mos­qui­to in­fes­ta­tion that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments be­lieve can be treat­ed by mere “spray­ing”.

“But you leave all the ar­eas where wa­ter is ac­cu­mu­lat­ing, so then you’ll come and spray again, right? A next com­pa­ny wants to come back and spray again.”

And the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) is call­ing the SoE a last re­sort re­ac­tion which lacks “fore­sight and trans­paren­cy”.

In­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader Lieu­tenant Com­man­der Nor­man Din­di­al told Guardian Me­dia that this demon­strates that “the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion is out of new ideas at this crit­i­cal stage and in­stead of pro­vid­ing proac­tive poli­cies and re­al crime pre­ven­tion so­lu­tions, some­thing that was promised to the pop­u­la­tion once they got in­to of­fice”.