?Hav­ing had the ab­solute and un­wa­ver­ing sup­port of the peo­ple of Laven­tille for the 54 years of its ex­is­tence as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, it is high­ly con­temp­tu­ous of the PNM's po­lit­i­cal leader, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, to go in­to that part of the coun­try, which is rid­dled with crime and sunk in un­der­de­vel­op­ment, to name in an ad hoc man­ner a com­mit­tee of min­is­ters and par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives to dis­cern the prob­lems of the area. Where have Mr Man­ning and the PNM Gov­ern­ment been all this time?Specif­i­cal­ly, as it re­lates to the stew­ard­ship of Mr Man­ning's ad­min­is­tra­tion, be­tween 2002 and 2007, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning and his Gov­ern­ment an­nounced a plan for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of east Port-of-Spain, in­clu­sive of the "be­hind the bridge" ar­eas, Laven­tille and Sea Lots. Where has that plan got to be­yond talk and the es­tab­lish­ment of a com­pa­ny, pre­sum­ably to ef­fect the job?

Over the same pe­ri­od of fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of Laven­tille, the Gov­ern­ment em­barked on a mas­sive pro­gramme of con- struc­tion or re­fur­bish­ment of ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ings, a pala­tial prime min­is­te­r­i­al res­i­dence and diplo­mat­ic cen­tre, ho­tels, a non-func­tion­al fi­nan­cial cen­tre and ela-bo­rate cul­tur­al com­plex­es in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do of du­bi­ous use­ful­ness. These build­ings were con­struct­ed at the cost of bil­lions of dol­lars and the Gov­ern­ment has spent hun­dreds of mil­lions to host two in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences while this faith­ful PNM con­stituen­cy re­gress­es. It is not on­ly that the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture of Laven­tille con­tin­ues to de­te­ri­o­rate but, most im­por­tant­ly, the hu­man con­di­tion wors­ens.

Crime is mak­ing life im­pos­si­ble for law-abid­ing res­i­dents of the area as hun­dreds of its young men are locked in a dead­ly and ut­ter­ly sense­less war, killing each oth­er over drugs, turf and out of pure ig­no­rance. So bad has crime be­come that the pre­mier steel­band of Laven­tille, Wit­co Des­per­a­does, has moved out of the area dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son to give com­fort to its sup­port­ers who want to vis­it the pa­n­yard. Yet, in a be­wil­der­ing flight of fan­cy, the Prime Min­is­ter re­flect­ed on the suc­cess of the St Barbs com­mu­ni­ty's crime re­duc­tion pro­gramme, and from there con­clud­ed that "it may well be that this meet­ing in Laven­tille tonight is the be­gin­ning of the com­plete erad­i­ca­tion of the crime prob­lem in Trinidad and To­ba­go...and may turn out to be the most sig­nif­i­cant meet­ing of its type ever held in T&T."

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the deficit in ful­fill­ing its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the se­cu­ri­ty of the na­tion is not go­ing to be closed by fan­ci­ful po­lit­i­cal rhetoric. Nei­ther are the prob­lems of crime and so­cial de­vel­op­ment in Laven­tille to be solved by po­lit­i­cal ole talk about death threats and who "fraid and ent fraid" to go in­to Laven­tille. Peo­ple have the right to sup­port a po­lit­i­cal par­ty of their choice, in­clu­sive of the right of the peo­ple of Laven­tille to sup­port the PNM. How­ev­er, such sup­port ought not be un­con­di­tion­al, blind and based on emo­tion or on how their par­ents and grand­par­ents aligned them­selves po­lit­i­cal­ly. PNM sup­port­ers in the area must recog­nise that the par­ty's lead­er­ship is sens­ing that it is in trou­ble po­lit­i­cal­ly and that ex­plains this out-of-sea­son woo­ing by the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate.

From there, the res­i­dents of Laven­tille, whether they sup­port the PNM or not, must be­gin to make se­ri­ous de­mands on the par­ty and Gov­ern­ment to come good on 50-year-old un­re­alised promis­es made to their par­ents and grand­par­ents. These are peo­ple who are not po­lit­i­cal in­no­cents. They have pro­vid­ed the back­bone of the sup­port base of the PNM. Even in the dark­est hour of the PNM, core Laven­tille pro­vid­ed two of the three seats won by the par­ty in 1986. The res­i­dents of the area must not set­tle for an evening of "sweet talk" and yet more clever promis­es. Laven­tille can­not con­tin­ue be­ing the vic­tim. It needs to con­front the rul­ing par­ty and make de­mands of it that would lead to a high­er qual­i­ty of life–more jobs, more ser­vices, more leisure op­por­tu­ni­ties and re­tail out­lets and much, much less crime.