Tony Fras­er

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment took prob­a­bly their most im­por­tant and per­haps coura­geous de­ci­sion of their 15 months in of­fice with the de­c­la­ra­tion of the state of emer­gency. It is a de­ci­sion full of po­ten­tial for a ma­jor re­duc­tion in the crim­i­nal men­ace that has ter­rorised us all for over 15 years. Un­der­stand­ably, it is much too ear­ly to say de­fin­i­tive­ly that the ef­fects of the SoE would break the back of the crim­i­nal in­fra­struc­ture (and that is what is go­ing to ul­ti­mate­ly mat­ter) but the Gov­ern­ment has shown it­self pre­pared to al­low the se­cu­ri­ty forces to deal de­ci­sive­ly with crim­i­nals. Lee Falk, the cre­ator of the Phan­tom com­ic se­ries, used to in­sert in sot­to voce that "Phan­tom is rough with rough necks." That seems to fit the need of the present; with the im­por­tant caveat that it is done with­in the am­bit of the law.

Crim­i­nals and their gangs have pros­pered for near­ly two decades be­cause suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ments nev­er had the courage to take the fight to them in any mean­ing­ful man­ner out on the streets. That is not said with­out recog­ni­tion of the var­i­ous man­age­ment strate­gies, leg­is­la­tion passed, con­sul­ta­tions be­tween the gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion that have tak­en place over the pe­ri­od of trau­ma. How­ev­er, they all failed to make the de­ci­sive and mus­cu­lar in­ter­ven­tion re­quired. That is not a thirst for blood but, like Phan­tom, there must be a mea­sure of fear dri­ven in­to the hearts of crim­i­nals by law en­force­ment of­fi­cers. I make a fur­ther qual­i­fi­ca­tion here that this col­umn is not ad­vo­cat­ing ex­tra-ju­di­cial shoot­ings and killings by po­lice of­fi­cers, but rather struc­tured, le­gal and in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven frontal in­ter­ven­tions where the crim­i­nals feel safe.

May­or Rudy Giu­liani (NY 1994-2001) was nev­er in doubt about what was re­quired. To achieve it he pur­sued an over­all plan that in­clud­ed "rough-stuff" strate­gic strikes, an ar­ray of man­age­ment pro­grammes and al­so tack­led in a se­ri­ous man­ner com­mer­cial crime. His phi­los­o­phy was to do what was re­quired and face the courts af­ter­wards.

On the is­sue of white col­lar crim­i­nals, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al sought to di­vert at­ten­tion from the fact that for many decades there have been those in the so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the UNC, who have not­ed that giv­en the na­ture of crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions, there must be those with large cap­i­tal re­sources and in­flu­ence at the apex of the sec­tor in­volved. Two or three gang lead­ers liv­ing it up at a five-star ho­tel do not be­long to the white col­lar crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions. Once again it is re­it­er­at­ed that this col­umn is not ad­vo­cat­ing un­con­sti­tu­tion­al usurp­ing of rights, but rather de­fin­i­tive le­gal ac­tion re­quired to smash the crim­i­nal net­work.

For many years dur­ing the Man­ning regime, colum­nists, in­clud­ing this one, com­men­ta­tors, op­po­si­tion politi­cians and or­di­nary peo­ple in the street called for a state of emer­gency to per­mit the po­lice and the army to pen­e­trate the lairs of the crim­i­nals, re­move them from cir­cu­la­tion and force them to re­lin­quish their weapons.

Man­ning of­fered mere­ly ar­ro­gant re­torts to jus­ti­fy his hope­less­ly in­ca­pable ap­proach to coun­ter­ing crime. He for­ev­er promised that his Gov­ern­ment's plans and pro­grammes would soon achieve re­sults; fact is they nev­er did. In­deed, what tran­spired over the years was even greater en­trench­ment of crim­i­nal­i­ty. Then Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph (who I in­sist had good in­ten­tions), wit­ting­ly or not, ad­mit­ted to the ex­pan­sion of crim­i­nal­i­ty by giv­ing fig­ures which showed that the num­ber of gangs and gang mem­bers was in­creas­ing. In­evitably, the reach of the gangs ex­pand­ed. This coun­try must reach the point of po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty where it will nev­er al­low any prime min­is­ter from any po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion to so of­fend their com­mon sense, in­tel­li­gence and vi­o­late their right to in­flu­ence sig­nif­i­cant de­ci­sions in the life of the coun­try by so re­fus­ing to heed the wis­dom of the many for the po­lit­i­cal agen­das of the few. It is im­por­tant for the se­cu­ri­ty forces to demon­strate that they have the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to ap­proach crime fight­ing with vigour and cer­tain­ty, helped by the SoE. And there is lit­tle point in seek­ing to min­imise the ef­forts of the po­lice and army by say­ing they are play­ing with an ad­van­tage; the law al­lows for such an ad­van­tage and that must be al­lowed and recog­nised.

A cou­ple star­tling news sto­ries over the last week in­di­cat­ed the grow­ing strength and bold­ness of the crim­i­nals. One sto­ry claimed that the crim­i­nals were con­sid­er­ing hir­ing pub­lic re­la­tions firms to press their case to the coun­try; the oth­er that a few gang lead­ers had in­stalled them­selves at the Hy­att, throw­ing cur­few par­ties, mak­ing out with women and flaunt­ing the loot gained from their crimes. Those are in­di­ca­tions of the emer­gence of a gang­ster state. But clear­ly notwith­stand­ing the po­ten­tial of the SoE, its de­c­la­ra­tion and the hold­ing of peo­ple un­der emer­gency pow­ers are far from be­ing the ul­ti­mate an­swers to crime. The in­fra­struc­ture of the gangs must be dis­man­tled; the links they now have to what seems to be an un­end­ing sup­ply of so­phis­ti­cat­ed weapon­ry must be found and bro­ken, and the Gov­ern­ment must use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to min­imise if not com­plete­ly un­der­mine the easy in­flu­ence the crim­i­nals have to re­cruit young peo­ple to their crim­i­nal gangs. For one thing, the young would-be gang­sters must be made aware that they do not share in the re­al "bling" lifestyle of their lead­ers; in fact they are mere­ly used by the few to al­low them to "play" them­selves at the Hy­att.

This col­umn al­so agrees with the se­nior at­tor­neys who ar­gue that the Gov­ern­ment has to get the le­gal el­e­ments of the emer­gency cor­rect. So too must they achieve clar­i­ty and una­nim­i­ty in their pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tions. How a Gov­ern­ment man­ages the ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture is as im­por­tant as the re­sults it achieves from pos­i­tive de­ci­sions tak­en. Le­gal er­rors and poor com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gies un­der­mine the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment and of­ten cause neg­a­tive re­ac­tions. The Prime Min­is­ter, if not the rest of her Gov­ern­ment, has to get it through her head that this pop­u­la­tion can­not be suc­cess­ful­ly bul­lied. The qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant is­sues in mod­ern po­lit­i­cal and man­age­ment sys­tems. That is at the core of what is hap­pen­ing in the Mid­dle East and in­deed every­where else where mod­ern po­lit­i­cal democ­ra­cy is vig­or­ous.