To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?It is most re­gret­table that sev­er­al in­sti­tu­tions of state have sat back and al­lowed the loot­ing of the con­struc­tion site for the church at Gua­napo Heights. It is well known that the Church of the Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ was be­ing con­struct­ed un­der high­ly con­tro­ver­sial, ques­tion­able and mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances. About the ac­tu­al church lit­tle is known and the in­for­ma­tion that has been made pub­lic about it was pro­vid­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, when she was Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and by Patrick Man­ning, when he was Prime Min­is­ter.

Mr Man­ning said in Par­lia­ment that the church was grant­ed a por­tion of state land to build a struc­ture. How­ev­er, while he ac­knowl­edged the leader of the church to be Pas­tor Ju­liana Pe­na, his spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er, he de­nied any per­son­al in­volve­ment in the con­struc­tion and act­ed as if he knew lit­tle else. In the month since the gen­er­al elec­tion, loot­ing of the premis­es has been tak­ing place to the point where sup­port ma­te­r­i­al from the build­ing un­der con­struc­tion was re­moved by loot­ers, caus­ing two of them to come crash­ing down with part of the dome. At the same time when all of this was hap­pen­ing, the Gov­ern­ment, the po­lice, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions have sat on their hands. Now, it seems, there is a wide­spread blame game tak­ing place with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan adopt­ing the pos­ture of an op­po­si­tion politi­cian and not a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, iden­ti­fy­ing the Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion as the cul­prits.

At yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Mr Ram­lo­gan went as far as say­ing that the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter should seek an­swers from Act­ing CoP James Philbert as to why the po­lice have not act­ed and if the an­swers are not of a sat­is­fac­to­ry na­ture, then he will be shown the door even ear­li­er than was planned. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al al­so chas­tised the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for not act­ing to pro­tect the prop­er­ty at Gua­napo, not­ing that that body has been in­ves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble wrong­do­ing there and there­fore had a right and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ini­ti­ate ac­tion to pre­vent loot­ing of pos­si­ble ev­i­dence. While Mr Ram­lo­gan seeks to blame every­one else, he should al­ways re­mem­ber that he is the le­gal ad­vis­er to Cab­i­net and the per­son who the Con­sti­tu­tion holds re­spon­si­ble for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of le­gal af­fairs. The re­sponse we have had so far from the po­lice is to the ef­fect that the own­er of the prop­er­ty is not known and so the po­lice could not ad­vance on the prop­er­ty to pro­tect it.

It is al­most as if all of the ma­jor le­gal in­sti­tu­tions have be­come shack­led, un­able to act in the na­tion­al in­ter­est while crim­i­nals are mak­ing off with loot, which could emerge as be­ing state prop­er­ty, en­dan­ger­ing pub­lic safe­ty and cre­at­ing ten­sion and con­fu­sion in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Not very far from the sur­face is an ob­vi­ous po­lit­i­cal un­der­cur­rent, es­pe­cial­ly in the in­stance of Mr Ram­lo­gan tag­ging the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, with which he had a spat in the mat­ter of whether Jack Warn­er could con­tin­ue in Fi­fa while be­ing a min­is­ter. The ques­tion the or­di­nary cit­i­zen must be ask­ing is why could these in­sti­tu­tions and guardians of the na­tion­al in­ter­est not come to­geth­er and work out a way of pro­ceed­ing with­out this un­seem­ly pub­lic squab­ble about who is re­spon­si­ble and who is not per­form­ing in the most ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner?

And this is more puz­zling in the con­text of the Gov­ern­ment hav­ing es­tab­lished at least three min­istries to in­ter­act with each oth­er to counter crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties of one kind or the oth­er. Why did it have to come to such a hu­mil­i­at­ing con­test?� In ad­di­tion to the law-abid­ing cit­i­zen be­ing dis­mayed by it all, crim­i­nals must cer­tain­ly feel that they could ben­e­fit from space and time as of­fi­cial­dom fights each oth­er. But it is not too late for the in­sti­tu­tions to com­bine their ef­forts rather than con­test­ing with each oth­er in such a pub­lic man­ner.