Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is hop­ing to move on crime talks by the next fort­night

Row­ley has pro­posed to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion each have teams to dis­cuss their re­spec­tive an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives and work on an agen­da based on their joint sub­mis­sions, which he an­tic­i­pat­ed could be in hand with­in the com­ing fort­night.

Row­ley in­di­cat­ed this in a Sep­tem­ber 16 let­ter to Per­sad- Bisses­sar on the Crime Cau­cus ef­fort.

And Op­po­si­tion MP Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day said Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith will be part of the Op­po­si­tion's team to pro­vide na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty so­lu­tions.

"So, Prime Min­is­ter, hum­ble your­self - put aside the hate and ac­ri­mo­ny Mr Man­ning spoke of... we need all hands on deck who can bring about so­lu­tions," Padarath added at UNC's me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader yes­ter­day.

This was the lat­est on the ex­pect­ed talks be­tween Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion, even as T&T's mur­der toll reached 420 yes­ter­day

Fol­low­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar's fu­tile calls ear­li­er this year to Gov­ern­ment for meet­ings on the crime prob­lem, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo had urged Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans for col­lab­o­ra­tion across the aisle on an­ti-crime mea­sures and leg­is­la­tion dur­ing the the Sep­tem­ber 11 launch of the new Par­lia­ment term.

While Row­ley ini­tial­ly was doubt­ful about Op­po­si­tion re­sponse, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her par­ty was ready and will­ing to sup­port Gov­ern­ment on the an­ti-crime fight and al­so de­tail its own so­lu­tions.

Af­ter her state­ment, Row­ley last Thurs­day said he in­tend­ed writ­ing her to ask her to sup­ply or to re­ceive "per­son­nel from the Gov­ern­ment on the is­sue of crime" and the Gov­ern­ment will re­ceive from her side on the is­sue, to see what com­mon ground ex­ists that the Par­lia­ment can deal with.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sub­se­quent­ly said the door had al­ways been open and she'd await his cor­re­spon­dence.

Row­ley's let­ter, which was is­sued on the OPM's Face­book page, yes­ter­day, stat­ed: "In keep­ing with our mu­tu­al de­sire to put our coun­try’s na­tion­al in­ter­est first, I in­vite you, as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, to par­tic­i­pate in the fol­low­ing ex­er­cise which is aimed at ex­plor­ing the op­tions avail­able to us, as Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, to ad­dress the mat­ter of the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the pop­u­la­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"I would like to re­ceive from you, in writ­ing, your pro­pos­al(s) which you be­lieve are wor­thy of bi­par­ti­san dis­cus­sions be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion. The Gov­ern­ment is al­so pre­pared to share with you its own ideas, pro­grammes and poli­cies for in­clu­sion in these dis­cus­sions.

"It is en­vis­aged that your pro­pos­al(s), like the Gov­ern­ment’s, would in­clude tools de­signed to law­ful­ly con­front the crim­i­nal el­e­ments that are in­creas­ing­ly em­bold­ened, as they op­er­ate in Trinidad and To­ba­go. I pro­pose that af­ter re­ceiv­ing your pro­pos­al we es­tab­lish teams com­pris­ing four mem­bers each, from both the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion, to dis­cuss the ini­tia­tives pro­posed. These teams will be guid­ed by a craft­ed agen­da formed from our joint sub­mis­sions which I an­tic­i­pate we could have in hand with­in the com­ing fort­night.

"I trust that my in­vi­ta­tion will be re­ceived in the most pos­i­tive way and that our teams could meet with the req­ui­site spir­it of col­lab­o­ra­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty that is re­quired by the na­ture of this per­sis­tent prob­lem which we all have been con­fronting for quite some time.

I look for­ward to hear­ing from you at your ear­li­est. Best wish­es."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day con­firmed that she re­ceived the let­ter via her email.

"I'll con­sid­er and re­spond in due course," she said briefly.

Row­ley left for New York yes­ter­day to at­tend the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly from Sep­tem­ber 19-26. (See page 16)

Mean­while, Padarath said the par­ty hadn't cau­cused on who would be their team mem­bers, but ex­pect­ed it would be dis­cussed at cau­cus.

"But the po­lit­i­cal leader al­so has the pre­rog­a­tive to make those de­ci­sions. I'm al­most cer­tain Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar will en­gage with oth­ers in the par­ty and in our ac­co­mo­da­tion in terms of who the team will be," he added.

"How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter must un­der­stand it's not on­ly the Op­po­si­tion. T&T's reached cri­sis stage where it's all hands on deck ....we've had these meet­ings be­tween Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment has an im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit be­ing un­able to ac­tion any of what we've dis­cussed and Mrs Bisses­sar is say­ing 'all hands must be on deck'.

"It's not just the Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment - all stake­hold­ers must be in­volved. So, the Op­po­si­tion's view is - yes we'll go to the ta­ble but with per­sons we be­lieve that can pro­duce tan­gi­ble so­lu­tions that'll work."

Not­ing for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith's NTA was part of UNC's Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions ac­co­mo­da­tion, Padarath said Gov­ern­ment needs peo­ple with a proven track record.

Not­ing Grif­fith's work as CoP, he said, "One such per­son on the na­tion­al land­scape is Grif­fith - the UNC sees him as a piv­otal cru­cial part­ner in crime re­duc­tion. Prime Min­is­ter, hum­ble your­self, you've al­ready failed in the crime fight. Let those with proven track record come to the ta­ble. You can­not use the ex­cuse of per­son­al an­i­mos­i­ty and ac­ri­mo­ny to keep peo­ple who are so­lu­tion-ori­ent­ed out of ef­forts to re­duce crime. You can­not de­pend on prayers to the Lord."

He added, "Grif­fith's demon­strat­ed as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and CoP that he can get the job done. The PM has pret­ty much ad­mit­ted he can bring to the ta­ble no new tal­ent, there­fore, we can ex­pect no dif­fer­ent be­yond the sym­bols of PNM fail­ure we've seen - such as (Fitzger­ald) Hinds. Grif­fith's seen by the pub­lic as some­one who can get the job done. These is­sues will be raised in our cau­cus. I'm sure every per­son will want to see him as part of the ef­fort."