The surge in the mur­der rate which set a new record for 2024 seems to have pan­icked the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in­to im­ple­ment­ing a State of Emer­gency (SoE) it had re­sist­ed for so long. Hav­ing de­cid­ed to im­ple­ment the SoE, one would have ex­pect­ed a more fo­cused ap­proach that demon­strat­ed a strong re­solve to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion.

In­stead, it looks like a se­ries of ad hoc mea­sures that could on­ly be viewed as mud­dling things through.

From the on­set, the SoE ap­peared to be a rush job that was de­ployed on the fly with no pre­plan­ning.

Doesn’t the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry have dif­fer­ent sce­nario plans al­low­ing them to move in­to high gear at the flick of a switch? No spe­cif­ic guide­lines or reg­u­la­tions were pre­sent­ed at the press con­fer­ence to an­nounce the SoE. These came a few hours lat­er. Nor were the lead­ers of the uni­formed ser­vices present at the an­nounce­ment.

The on­ly dif­fer­ence to the ex­ist­ing sit­u­a­tion was that the un­formed ser­vices were giv­en greater pow­ers of search and ar­rest. The whole pre­sen­ta­tion seemed sur­re­al. Reprisals by ri­val gangs are not new. What made this threat of reprisals dif­fer­ent?

We are ac­cus­tomed to po­lice raids which al­ways seem to yield guns and am­mu­ni­tion but no law­break­ers or arms traf­fick­ers to lead the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices to gun run­ners and smug­glers. In­deed, the dis­cov­ery of arms en­ter­ing the cus­toms ports has nev­er led to ar­rests. In­stead ship­ping agents and their ware­hous­es are the on­ly ones who pay a price. Since “in­tel­li­gence” or “cred­i­ble sources” mo­ti­vat­ed the de­ci­sion, one would ex­pect that the first 48 hours of the de­c­la­ra­tion of the SoE would have led to quick wins and im­me­di­ate, tan­gi­ble suc­cess­es as the crim­i­nal el­e­ment would be un­pre­pared.

A se­ries of suc­cess­ful out­comes ought to have demon­strat­ed that the TTPS were pre­pared and knew what they were about. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that ex­pec­ta­tion re­mains un­ful­filled. In a press con­fer­ence on De­cem­ber 31, the CoP con­firmed that 46 peo­ple were de­tained dur­ing the first 24 hours but gave no de­tails.

Mere hours lat­er, Ran­dall Hec­tor, an at­tor­ney who has act­ed as a pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor on be­half of the state, was am­bushed and killed in front of his fam­i­ly af­ter de­liv­er­ing a ser­mon at his church. The mes­sage was clear.

If the SoE was meant to demon­strate that the State was in con­trol, it has not achieved that ob­jec­tive. In­stead, the as­sas­si­na­tion of Ran­dall Hec­tor had the op­po­site ef­fect. State pros­e­cu­tors did not at­tend court on the first work­ing day of 2025 in­di­cat­ing that the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al arm of the jus­tice sys­tem has been dam­aged.

It is worth re­mem­ber­ing that the as­sas­si­na­tion of Dana See­ta­hal, who al­so act­ed as a state pros­e­cu­tor, has nev­er been solved. If the state can­not pro­tect its of­fi­cers, who or what is next? The rot is much deep­er than we think.

The Prime Min­is­ter has added to this state of con­fu­sion and un­cer­tain­ty by giv­ing no­tice of his res­ig­na­tion with no firm date. By say­ing that he will not seek re­elec­tion as a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and will step down as Prime Min­is­ter be­fore the end of the le­gal lim­it to this Par­lia­ment, he has made him­self a lame duck and cre­at­ed a lead­er­ship is­sue.

Which pri­or­i­ty should be ad­dressed first? The na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges or the coun­try’s lead­er­ship? Are they dif­fer­ent, or can we ex­pect more gangs guns and games?