Two week­ends ago, Don­ald Trump was shot while cam­paign­ing to re­turn to the Oval Of­fice. When he erupt­ed from the cen­tre of his Se­cret Ser­vice body shields, fist sky­ward, re­pub­li­can red stream­ing from his ear, shout­ing “Fight! Fight! ...” the crowd an­swered, “USA!”USA!”

His sur­vival has launched quite a few con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries though. Re­gard­less, Trump’s machis­mo is in­creas­ing­ly over­shad­ow­ing the el­der­ly Pres­i­dent Biden, whose per­for­mance at last month’s US Pres­i­den­tial has been de­scribed as “in­co­her­ent”, amongst oth­er crit­i­cisms. A grow­ing num­ber of De­moc­rats are call­ing for him to step down.

In the mean­time, Trump has seized his mo­ment and would be quite smug about join­ing the elite list of tar­get­ed US pres­i­dents such as Ronald Rea­gan, JFK, and Abra­ham Lin­coln.

In Trin­ba­go, We know ex­act­ly who are the “Trump” and “Biden” of our cur­rent na­tion­al lead­er­ship prob­lems. Will the for­tunes of the Amer­i­can ar­che­types in their elec­tions give any in­di­ca­tion of what we can ex­pect in our own next year? Haven’t we seen videos of our lo­cal crim­i­nals bran­dish­ing high-pow­ered weapons like the AR-15 used by Trump’s would-be as­sas­sin?

Af­ter an es­pe­cial­ly bloody week­end of 18 mur­ders, our cit­i­zens have been re­mind­ed that they or their loved ones could be killed at any time. The brazen hit of three men at a Rit­u­als out­let on the SMR, Cunu­pia, could so eas­i­ly have re­sult­ed in the loss of in­no­cent lives. CoP Hare­wood-Christo­pher would lat­er clas­si­fy sev­en of the mur­ders as gang-re­lat­ed and three as rob­beries. The oth­er eight may not have yet been de­ter­mined.

Last Thurs­day’s “in your face” road­blocks through­out the coun­try caused hours of in­con­ve­nience to com­muters. This strat­e­gy is con­sid­ered by many to be a knee jerk re­ac­tion for “op­tics”. Where are the hotspots? What are the prime crime-time win­dows? Why aren’t the road­blocks in­formed by such facts?

When Cana­di­an YouTu­ber Chris Must List in­ter­viewed the gang mem­bers re­cent­ly, they cracked down on him in­stead of the gangs! I was an MP and min­is­ter when we passed the An­ti-Gang leg­is­la­tion in 2011 un­der the late min­is­ter of jus­tice and MP for St Joseph, Her­bert Vol­ney. The laws are there but the polic­ing is not. We don’t want the TTPS in our faces, we need them “in the faces” of the crim­i­nals!

Last week PM Row­ley met again with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil af­ter their pre­vi­ous gath­er­ing in the face of a crime surge in To­ba­go. Con­se­quent­ly, the TTPS will now use the “full force of the law,” but the Par­lia­ment re­cent­ly weak­ened such law by unan­i­mous­ly vot­ing for bail for those com­mit­ting mur­der and oth­er se­ri­ous crimes. The 18-mur­der week­end fol­lowed.

In our na­tion­al con­text, we have ad­vanced crim­i­nals, but the lead­er­ship, “ex­per­tise”, and re­sources to deal with them are pre­his­toric. Per­haps the old hang­man and non-bail­able mur­der are the des­per­ate mea­sures re­quired to prop up our fail­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus. Where are PM Bas­deo Pan­day and AG Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj when you need them? The crim­i­nals have in­creas­ing rights as those in­no­cent vic­tims and their fam­i­lies are di­min­ished.

The bail for mur­der law can be re­pealed as eas­i­ly as the in­fa­mous Sec­tion 34 was in 2014. What about a ref­er­en­dum on the re­sump­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment? Or should the TTPS main­tain their bril­liant go-to “to­tal polic­ing” road­blocks dur­ing rush hour?

Where are the le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies when we need them to prop­er­ly eval­u­ate our most rel­e­vant crime-fight­ing leg­is­la­tion, or lack there­of? The Hugh Wood­ing Law School re­cent­ly ho­n­oured the late Dana See­ta­hal, SC, at their 50th an­niver­sary on Ju­ly 13, but a decade af­ter her mur­der, due to our back­wa­ter jus­tice sys­tem, her mur­der sus­pects have not yet been tried. Per­haps if and when they are, they will be freed on some tech­ni­cal­i­ty, and the tax­pay­ers will have to pay them mil­lions.

Haven’t we seen this with the trav­es­ty in the case of Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man? Where is the jus­tice? How do these cas­es help de­ter would-be crim­i­nals? Jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied.

The na­tion is look­ing for an al­ter­na­tive as this ten-year-old Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to fail us in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty but the UNC re­sponds with a full sched­ule of pre-bud­get meet­ings in the wake of the blood­bath, and their Mon­day Night Meet­ing has gone on hol­i­day. They have not seized the mo­ment to chan­nel pub­lic sen­ti­ment in­to forc­ing the Gov­ern­ment and pro­tec­tive ser­vices in­to an ef­fec­tive re­sponse. Is it more of their “eat grass” be­cause we are not the gov­ern­ment strat­e­gy? The cit­i­zen­ry wants lead­ers who put coun­try be­fore self at all times.

I have on­ly heard the voic­es of for­mer MPs Mick­ela Pan­day, Vas­ant Bharath, Gary Grif­fith, and cur­rent MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly speak­ing sen­si­bly on these press­ing na­tion­al is­sues. I agree with Mick­ela when she says that the Gov­ern­ment re­fus­es to act be­cause peo­ple in high places are ben­e­fit­ing from crime. She has called for an end to gun vi­o­lence al­so. MP Ram­bal­ly has called out both the Op­po­si­tion and the Gov­ern­ment for “play­ing games.” Vas­ant drew com­par­isons be­tween Trin­ba­go and Mau­ri­tius while con­trast­ing their han­dling of crime. Their na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is far su­pe­ri­or, of course.

The most sen­si­ble voic­es seem to be the fur­thest away from the ears of those with the au­thor­i­ty to act.