Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don has warned that cit­i­zens will have to sac­ri­fice for the na­tion to get a han­dle on crime. The head of the lo­cal Ro­man Catholic Church said crime must be treat­ed with the same lev­el of ur­gency and se­ri­ous­ness as the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. He made the com­ments when he ap­peared on a spe­cial episode of CNC3’s The Big In­ter­view which airs tonight at 7.30 pm.

Gor­don said he agreed with Cari­com’s as­ser­tion that crime and vi­o­lence in the Caribbean is an epi­dem­ic fu­elled by il­le­gal guns and or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs and it threat­ens the re­gion’s democ­ra­cy.

T&T is near­ing 600 mur­ders for the year and home in­va­sions are in­creas­ing­ly a con­cern in com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try. For the first sev­en months of this year, there were more than 50 mur­ders every month. Since 2015, Jan­u­ary has record­ed the high­est num­ber of mur­ders for the year.

“How did we deal with the pan­dem­ic?” Gor­don asked.

“We brought every­body to­geth­er and we had con­stant con­ver­sa­tions about the lit­tle and big things that need­ed to hap­pen to solve the prob­lem of the pan­dem­ic. Every week we were ed­u­cat­ing. Every week we were shift­ing the strat­e­gy. Every week we were learn­ing more from each oth­er and we were work­ing at it. If crime is a pan­dem­ic, and I be­lieve it is, we’ve not then gone where we need to go which is an all-of-so­ci­ety ap­proach so we can start tight­en­ing up this thing that we are all see­ing as com­plete­ly out of hand in our coun­try.”

Pressed on the mat­ter of peo­ple be­ing large­ly iso­lat­ed and un­der a cur­few dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Gor­don said: “When we were fac­ing COVID-19 every­body un­der­stood that my usu­al move­ments and rights had to be cur­tailed for a lit­tle while so all of us could get through this, and I think we are in the same sit­u­a­tion now with crime. My rights have to be cur­tailed a lit­tle bit so all of us could get through this to­geth­er.”

He said the coun­try isn’t see­ing the type of lead­er­ship around the “crime pan­dem­ic” that it saw around the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“I think both are equal­ly vi­cious for the whole of so­ci­ety,” he said.

Gor­don, who was in­stalled as arch­bish­op in Oc­to­ber 2017 of­fered his analy­sis of the roots of crime: “We have an un­der­ground drug prob­lem that mor­phed in­to an il­le­gal drug prob­lem that mor­phed in­to an il­le­gal gun prob­lem, an il­le­gal hu­man traf­fick­ing prob­lem that has pro­duced so much cash it has been able to bribe and buy out the gate­keep­ers who are sup­posed to keep us safe. That’s a pan­dem­ic.”

To be­gin fix­ing the crime prob­lem which has plagued the coun­try for decades, cit­i­zens will have to be pre­pared to sac­ri­fice some of their lib­er­ty in the short term to achieve a bet­ter life in the longer term, he said.

“There is a time when a so­ci­ety has to grow up when you have to re­alise all the lib­er­ty that I have has not brought me the kinds of free­dom, lifestyle and se­cu­ri­ty that I re­al­ly want. I have to start giv­ing up some­thing to get some­thing bet­ter and we have to start recog­nis­ing that we can’t con­tin­ue down the road that we have gone,” he said.

Gor­don added that cit­i­zens and those in lead­er­ship po­si­tions must make de­ci­sions for the na­tion with the fu­ture in mind.

He ex­plained: “What does Trinidad need to­day so that our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren will want to stay in Trinidad in the fu­ture? I think the big de­ci­sions in the coun­try have to be made with one sin­gle ques­tion, what do I do in this de­ci­sion that my grand­child will want to live in this coun­try?

“If we start­ed to make in­ter-gen­er­a­tional de­ci­sions, we would make very dif­fer­ent de­ci­sions. They will be much wis­er and hard­er. It will re­quire sac­ri­fice but we will get our­selves where we need to get to.”

The arch­bish­op al­so ad­dressed vi­o­lence in schools and its broad­er im­pact on so­ci­ety.

“We have to be able to go in­to the schools in the com­mu­ni­ties that are fail­ing. It’s not the schools that are fail­ing, it’s the com­mu­ni­ties that are fail­ing and the schools are fail­ing those com­mu­ni­ties. We are not able to turn it around be­cause of the num­ber of dif­fer­ent things that are hap­pen­ing that we need to be able to deal with,” Gor­don said.

Giv­en the so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try and the world, Gor­don said we are liv­ing through a time of “deep hope­less­ness.” How­ev­er, we are al­so liv­ing through a time of “un­prece­dent­ed changes and this is un­like any oth­er change we have seen be­fore” with rapid ad­vance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy.

Even with these changes in tech­nol­o­gy and hope­less­ness, re­li­gion and God are still rel­e­vant and play an im­por­tant role in the lives of peo­ple.

“Peo­ple are more hun­gry right now. Peo­ple are more alone right now. Peo­ple are more des­o­late and have no mean­ing in their lives. More young peo­ple are de­pressed and find­ing them­selves sui­ci­dal than we’ve had years be­fore this. I would ar­gue, no. Re­li­gion is far more rel­e­vant to­day.”

Gor­don’s New Year’s wish for T&T is peace and hope in 2025. He al­so im­plored fam­i­lies to spend time to­geth­er over the hol­i­days.

“Do some fam­i­ly time. Have a bas­ket and ask every­one when they come for Christ­mas lunch to put the tech­nol­o­gy in a bas­ket. Put the tech­nol­o­gy aside and re­al­ly en­joy each oth­er. Have every­body en­gaged in the prepa­ra­tion, be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter. What our fam­i­lies need much more is more time to­geth­er do­ing fool­ish lit­tle chores and laugh­ing and cel­e­brat­ing,” he said

He al­so ad­vised that fam­i­lies re­mem­ber the rea­son for the sea­son, “the best gift God has ever giv­en to hu­man­i­ty.”