Pan­ic spread quick­ly in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, af­ter word that an ex­plo­sive de­vice had been found at the Gov­ern­ment Plaza Parkade.

This led to evac­u­a­tions and shut­downs of near­by gov­ern­ment of­fices, with many peo­ple opt­ing to leave the cap­i­tal ear­ly than to wait for the se­cu­ri­ty search­es to be com­plet­ed.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob says a man­hunt has been launched for a sus­pect iden­ti­fied from CCTV footage. We hope that the per­pe­tra­tor/s are brought to swift jus­tice.

On Sun­day, a voice note cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia al­so warned peo­ple to stay out of the cap­i­tal due to at­tacks on the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion. That turned out to be false, with the po­lice in­di­cat­ing there was on­ly a shoot­ing in­ci­dent in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Need­less to say, it seems that the lull brought on by months of lock­down and COVID-19 has now been shat­tered and that the crim­i­nal el­e­ment is get­ting back to the busi­ness fast and fu­ri­ous.

The sense of un­ease and an eerie sense of some­thing wait­ing to hap­pen can­not be good for T&T, even as lead­ers hag­gle over is­sues re­lat­ing to the ap­point­ment of a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and who is right or wrong.

Yes­ter­day, AG Faris Al-Rawi thanked the TTPS and the Fire Ser­vice for their “quick ac­tion” in clear­ing the AG'S of­fice af­ter an ex­plo­sive de­vice was found near the of­fice and there were re­ports that pro­jec­tiles had been launched at his of­fice's glass win­dows. Al-Rawi said he had a deep con­cern for the safe­ty of em­ploy­ees at the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds sought to re­as­sure the pop­u­la­tion yes­ter­day that there was no link be­tween yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent and Sun­day's voice note, not­ing DCP Ja­cob had as­sured him of this. While Hinds could not say who was the per­son be­hind the voice note, he de­scribed it as “ter­ror­ist be­hav­iour” de­signed to cre­ate “dis­or­der and dis­rup­tion.”

Min­is­ter Hinds may have hit the nail on the head when he said the in­ci­dents are an in­di­ca­tion there are des­per­ate peo­ple in so­ci­ety pre­pared to dis­rupt things. Even while he urged cit­i­zens to be vig­i­lant and go about their law­ful busi­ness, Min­is­ter Hinds must know that in the cur­rent cli­mate, that is eas­i­er said than done.

The resur­gence of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty leaves cit­i­zens scared and in a state of pan­ic.

What hap­pened yes­ter­day is a symp­tom of the deep­er prob­lem this coun­try faces at this time and what makes it more dis­heart­en­ing is that those with the abil­i­ty to do some­thing to end it seem more in­tent on get­ting the bet­ter of each oth­er.

The coun­try can­not af­ford to de­scend in­to chaos and law­less­ness. Politi­cians on both sides of the di­vide need to un­der­stand there is too much at stake and too much to lose.

Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, over 320 peo­ple have been mur­dered and 1,600 have died be­cause of COVID-19. That is a thought worth pon­der­ing for those who feel the busi­ness of T&T is about them­selves and not the peo­ple they rep­re­sent.

We hope, there­fore, that in the in­ter­est of the coun­try and na­tion­al good, every­one who has a part to play in fix­ing T&T will come to­geth­er and sort things out. To do oth­er­wise will be at our own per­il.