To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

It's un­der­stand­able that the an­nounce- ment of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the breathal­yser, to con­trol dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol, came dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence. Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert who re­port­ed on Thurs­day Cab­i­net's ap­proval of two breath-test­ing de­vices, has long on be­half of the gov­ern­ment as­sumed own­er­ship of the breathal­yser project. It was dur­ing his 1991-1995 first term in that port­fo­lio that the pol­i­cy was adopt­ed to re­duce road ac­ci­dents by re­mov­ing dri­vers, pre­sumed im­paired through liquor con­sump­tion, from be­hind steer­ing wheels.

Ran­dom breath-test­ing to sup­port en­force­ment of laws against liquor-im­paired dri­ving has been stan­dard prac­tice in many coun­tries. That it has tak­en Trinidad and To­ba­go this long to move from pol­i­cy adop­tion, a decade-and-a-half ago, to procla­ma­tion of the Breathal­yser Act to­mor­row, should give pru­dent cit­i­zens pause in cred­it­ing de­c­la­ra­tions of fi­nal readi­ness for im­ple­men­ta­tion. The en­abling leg­is­la­tion had been passed un­der the UNC. It was re­vis­it­ed un­der the PNM, pro­vi­sions restud­ied, fin­er-tuned and plans re­made. New leg­is­la­tion was passed in mid-2007. Near­ly two-and-a-half years lat­er, the clear­est achieve­ment of progress is to be reck­oned in to­mor­row's procla­ma­tion.

On Thurs­day, Mr Im­bert re­count­ed the "care­ful" checks by his min­istry of the avail­able equip­ment, be­fore choice of brands and meth­ods. "We have iden­ti­fied suit­able de­vices to use here," he said tri­umphant­ly. Ex­ten­sive prod­uct eval­u­a­tion "was one of the rea­sons we took so much time." He is now sat­is­fied that the equip­ment Cab­i­net ap­proved last week will sur­vive fu­ture chal­lenges by "clever at­tor­neys try­ing to find loop­holes" in the law. The courts will de­cide, when those mat­ters arise, the fate of le­gal chal­lenges of the breathal­yser de­vices. Un­til then, Mr Im­bert's as­sur­ances amount to loud mar­ket­ing of the fruit to date of his many years of labour to­ward de­liv­ery of a work­able breathal­yser scheme.

Such a scheme has tire­less­ly been clam­oured for by pres­sure groups such as Ar­rive Alive, and long await­ed by cit­i­zens made fear­ful of the per­ils of un­der-reg­u­lat­ed and, worse, un­der-po­liced road traf­fic.

It's in the re­spect of reg­u­la­tion and en­force­ment that the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the post-Cab­i­net claims stands wide open to ques­tion.

Reg­u­la­tions, their draft­ing, their suf­fi­cien­cy and their in­ter­pre­ta­tion are with­in the com­pe­tence of Cab­i­net and oth­er of­fi­cials nowhere rep­re­sent­ed near the plat­form where Mr Im­bert held forth on Thurs­day. En­force­ment, in­clud­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion in re­al-world prac­tice of the reg­u­la­tions, are ob­vi­ous­ly mat­ters for the po­lice.

"By the end of the month for the Christ­mas sea­son, the po­lice will be out in full force, do­ing breathal­yser test­ing," Mr Im­bert said, not­ing that such force will be felt in lim­ing ar­eas and bars. In the fes­tive sea­son such as Christ­mas–and Car­ni­val soon af­ter–so-called lim­ing ar­eas mul­ti­ply by a large fac­tor, as of­fice par­ties and spe­cial events pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for laps­es in­to liquor-im­paired dri­ving. As­sur­ances that po­lice will be "out in full force" ob­vi­ous­ly car­ry far more weight when they come from ser­vice com­man­ders, or even the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.

Of­fi­cers were be­ing trained in ap­ply­ing breathal­yser tech­nol­o­gy, Mr Im­bert al­so said. Again, it's for oth­er au­thor­i­ties to con­firm the ex­tent of the avail­abil­i­ty and up­take of such train­ing. The Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter is en­ti­tled to claim cred­it for fi­nal­ly un­ty­ing all the red tape that had for so long ren­dered pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­tion un­work­able. In mak­ing con­fi­dent de­c­la­ra­tions, how­ev­er, that from to­mor­row, or month-end, the breathal­yser will ma­te­ri­al­ly im­prove T&T's road-safe­ty ex­pe­ri­ence, he is clear­ly speak­ing out of turn.