This coun­try had been des­per­ate­ly cling­ing to hope since An­drea Bharatt was kid­napped last Fri­day—hope that this time around things would turn out dif­fer­ent­ly, that the good peo­ple would win.

That hope evap­o­rat­ed yes­ter­day when An­drea’s body was lift­ed out of a precipice off Heights of Aripo Road in Ari­ma, just a few miles away from where she was last seen in a taxi head­ing to her home.

Col­lec­tive grief, raw and al­most pal­pa­ble, mixed with anger over the loss of an­oth­er daugh­ter, is once again be­ing ex­pressed through every avail­able medi­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The na­tion that had been unit­ed in the sin­gle cause of find­ing An­drea, keep­ing vig­il, of­fer­ing prayers and pe­ti­tions, now de­mands more from those who must be held to ac­count for this lat­est tragedy.

T&T has been this way too of­ten be­fore. Sad­ly, as trans­fixed as this coun­try had been over the past six days by the des­per­ate search for An­drea, her sto­ry trag­i­cal­ly mir­rors too many oth­ers who have al­so been lost in the most hor­rif­ic of cir­cum­stances.

When­ev­er these heinous crimes are record­ed, there is the in­evitable fin­ger-point­ing, usu­al­ly at the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and oth­er el­e­ments of our un­der­per­form­ing crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

But oth­ers need to be held to ac­count for their many egre­gious fail­ures and they must be called out for re­peat­ed­ly ne­glect­ing to do what they were elect­ed to do in the in­ter­est of this coun­try.

The politi­cians who have been putting nar­row self-in­ter­ests and par­ti­san pref­er­ences above those of the peo­ple they were put in­to of­fice to serve have been fail­ing T&T re­peat­ed­ly.

They failed An­drea Bharatt, who was not safe even on the short com­mute from her work­place to her home.

They failed Ashan­ti Ri­ley, who fell vic­tim to preda­tors that prowled the streets near her home.

The deaths of these two young women, along with all the oth­er vi­o­lent crimes com­mit­ted against women and girls, can be blamed on the leg­isla­tive fail­ures in the past year that has giv­en the up­per hand to the crim­i­nals.

They have been play­ing pol­i­tics with the lives of our loved ones.

This rag­ing, griev­ing na­tion is owed an ex­pla­na­tion about this propen­si­ty by elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives for scor­ing cheap po­lit­i­cal points rather than sup­port­ing ur­gent­ly need­ed an­ti-gang and bail laws.

If they tru­ly grasp the depth of the pain and loss felt by so many through­out this week, then they should re­alise that cit­i­zens’ tol­er­ance for emp­ty words and un­kept promis­es has worn thin. An­drea’s mur­der has put us all in a very dark place.

Ex­or­cis­ing this evil from the land re­quires im­me­di­ate ac­tion by politi­cians, who must ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all that has gone wrong and seek re­demp­tion by fi­nal­ly do­ing what they should have done months ago.

The pri­or­i­ty must be the fill­ing of every gap and loop­hole in the leg­isla­tive frame­work that gives the ad­van­tage to mur­ders, rapists, kid­nap­pers and gang­sters.

There is no time to waste.