Gail Alexan­der

Cit­i­zens must ex­am­ine the Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime man­age­ment based on state­ments Dr Kei­th Row­ley made while in Op­po­si­tion in 2012, where he said if a gov­ern­ment can’t deal with crime, then the gov­ern­ment it­self is part of the prob­lem.

That’s the view of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Sen­a­tor Dami­an Ly­der fol­low­ing the re­cent record crime wave, in­clud­ing gang-re­lat­ed mur­ders.

There were six mur­ders in 20 hours last Sat­ur­day. That in­clud­ed the killing of Shel­don Coutain, the Ras­ta City gang leader (St Fran­cois Val­ley Road unit), just be­fore 6 pm on Pic­ton Street, New­town, oblique­ly be­hind St Patrick’s Church. Res­i­dents cit­ed heavy au­to­mat­ic weapon fire and the shoot­ers’ ve­hi­cle speed­ing up the street, post-at­tack. Six­ty-six shells were found at that scene.

Ly­der yes­ter­day not­ed that in 2012, Row­ley was quot­ed as say­ing, “And if the Gov­ern­ment can’t deal with it (crime) then the Gov­ern­ment it­self is part of the prob­lem.”

He al­so not­ed that in April 2013, Row­ley was quot­ed in the Ex­press as say­ing, “Any­time a Gov­ern­ment re­sorts to blam­ing the Op­po­si­tion for its fail­ure to de­liv­er on their man­date and their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the peo­ple, it is a clear sign that they have ac­cept­ed that they have out­lined their use­ful­ness.”

Ly­der added, “If Dr Row­ley said those two state­ments while in Op­po­si­tion, then I think it is clear that he has to de­clare on his own—through the yard­stick of the 2012 state­ment at least— that his Gov­ern­ment has failed and demon­strat­ed PNM is in­ca­pable of fight­ing crime in T&T.

“If the Gov­ern­ment is re­luc­tant to do any in­tro­spec­tion on its an­ti-crime man­age­ment, then al­most every per­son— from busi­ness­peo­ple to par­ents — have done that as­sess­ment. No­body feels safe.

“It’s not nec­es­sary to politi­cise this. It’s sim­ply that peo­ple don’t know if they may be­come ‘col­lat­er­al dam­age’ while out­side. They may see strange new el­e­ments in their ar­eas or just sud­den­ly be­come a tar­get if they’re alone. This re­newed crime wave and heat­ed gang war­fare spi­ralling out of con­trol has giv­en us mur­ders, armed rob­beries, break­ing and en­ter­ing, home in­va­sions and worse, school vi­o­lence.”

He added, “This over­all sit­u­a­tion has made it clear this PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­plete­ly in­ca­pable of stamp­ing out crime. It comes as no sur­prise that crime sta­tis­tics are at the high­est in over a decade when we had the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter re­cent­ly say he’s not re­spon­si­ble for cit­i­zens’ safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. And the lat­est cri­sis has oc­curred af­ter this Gov­ern­ment presided over the col­lapse of a Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and the re­moval of the for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, who was bent on re­duc­ing crime. There was a re­duc­tion un­der him but it be­gan rag­ing again af­ter his re­moval.”

Ly­der al­so called for Row­ley to speak about his re­cent US trip.

“The coun­try needs to know what ben­e­fits were achieved from this trip which tax­pay­ers paid for, par­tic­u­lar­ly since we’ve seen pho­tos of the Prime Min­is­ter on a Zoom call with the US Vice Pres­i­dent. He could have eas­i­ly done that from White­hall.”

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