Yvonne Ba­boolal

What should have been a sim­ple pre­sen­ta­tion of keys cer­e­mo­ny turned near ex­plo­sive in the St Paul Street crime hot spot in east Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day with mil­i­tary back up hav­ing to be called in to re­in­force po­lice pres­ence in the area. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar turned up with a heavy se­cu­ri­ty de­tail in place to de­liv­er the fea­ture ad­dress at the pre­sen­ta­tion of keys for the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion's Clifton Street Tow­ers to res­i­dents of the area. An­gry peo­ple lined the street protest­ing loud­ly, main­ly against the Gov­ern­ment's ar­rest of on­ly "small fry" crim­i­nals and the non-ar­rest of the big sharks. Their voic­es rose as a group of East In­di­ans passed by along St Paul Street on their way to the Tow­ers to col­lect keys.

"They bring the whole of Ca­roni down! We have to protest!" a woman shout­ed. Just be­fore the PM spoke un­der a tent set up in the court­yard of the Tow­ers, the shouts com­ing up from the bot­tom of the hill in­ten­si­fied as a woman was ar­rest­ed. When PNM MP for the area Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald ar­rived and went to the head ta­ble, a man, wav­ing the pro­gramme, walked in­to the tent and shout­ed loud­ly and re­peat­ed­ly, "Why your name not here, dar­ling?" Mc­Don­ald, who was not list­ed on the pro­gramme to speak, spoke be­fore Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Per­sad-Bisses­sar. She gave spe­cial thanks to HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John for invit­ing her to the func­tion.

But even while the shouts from the bot­tom of the hill con­tin­ued Per­sad-Bisses­sar, dur­ing her ad­dress, re­mained un­com­pro­mis­ing in her stand against those who are bent on a life of law­less­ness. Not­ing that the dis­tri­b­u­tion of hous­es was one as­pect of the Gov­ern­ment's crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tive, the PM stat­ed, "It is sig­nif­i­cant that we are as­sem­bled here, con­sid­ered to be both a hot spot for crime and one of the most ne­glect­ed ar­eas, to launch the Clifton Street hous­ing project. "We are cog­nisant of the fact that crime has sev­er­al faces, places, caus­es and ef­fect and there is a need to ad­dress each with­in its own con­text." But the PM was un­com­pro­mis­ing in her stand against crim­i­nals.

"I al­so un­der­stand that, for some, the long arm of the law is our best course of ac­tion. "And for those bent on re­main­ing in a life of crim­i­nal­i­ty we will take them out in one way or the oth­er." By this time, army of­fi­cers who were not vis­i­ble at the start of the func­tion ap­peared and po­si­tioned them­selves at strate­gic points. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a choice for peo­ple but is equal­ly com­mit­ted to tak­ing the strongest ac­tion against those who refuse to fol­low that path. "Make no mis­take about it...This Gov­ern­ment will re­move law­less­ness at every lev­el from this so­ci­ety," she said. "There is no room for com­pro­mise on this." The PM said those ap­pre­hend­ed in­clud­ed those who have un­leashed some of the most vi­cious at­tacks on peo­ple. "We now have them, hun­dreds of them, they are no longer out there to harm you and your loved ones," she said. "They are the ones who are now fear­ful and run­ning to hide."