The Gov­ern­ment has got it­self in­to a bind; or maybe it has been put in­to that squeeze by the ex­as­per­a­tions and fears of large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion des­per­ate for a re­lease from the present all-con­sum­ing night­mare of the times. We don’t think that to be an ex­ag­ger­a­tion and hy­per­bole of the re­al­i­ty of our present con­di­tion. In­deed, it’s the out­come of 20-plus years of un­de­terred crim­i­nal ac­tion on the body of the na­tion.

The re­al­i­ty be­fore the coun­try is that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments, in par­tic­u­lar the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment of the last ten years, have not made the slight­est im­pact of at least dri­ving the crim­i­nals in­to a de­fen­sive mode. To the con­trary, they have be­come even more ag­gres­sive, as­sertive, un­afraid, State of Emer­gency (SoE) or not, by what they per­ceive to be the weak­ness of the State and its in­sti­tu­tions to de­ter them from their ob­jec­tives.

To this end, the crim­i­nals make known their in­ten­tions dai­ly. They con­tin­ue to kill, maim, in­vade the sanc­ti­ty and safe­ty of cit­i­zens’ homes and they do so with­out fear of what­ev­er re­ac­tion may come from the au­thor­i­ties.

What this has done is en­cour­aged deep cyn­i­cism to be spread abroad of the val­ue of the de­clared SoE. That neg­a­tiv­i­ty has sunk deep in­to the think­ing and feel­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty about the Gov­ern­ment now adopt­ing an op­tion which was pro­ject­ed and re­ject­ed more than five years ago.

Who can there­fore fault the crim­i­nol­o­gists, the po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ob­servers and the or­di­nary man in the street when they scoff at the po­ten­tial val­ue of the emer­gency as de­clared, when the crim­i­nals have be­come even more en­trenched.

What this Gov­ern­ment has failed to ac­knowl­edge is the val­ue of hav­ing pub­lic opin­ion on its side. It has pressed on with the at­ti­tude that it alone knows best what is need­ed, all else be­ing froth un­wor­thy of val­ue. The crim­i­nals, ob­serv­ing and ap­pre­ci­at­ing the lack of pub­lic sup­port, will feel no re­straints on their ac­tions. This can lead to en­cour­ag­ing mem­bers of the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to close their win­dows, doors and opt for self-preser­va­tion as the on­ly vi­able ac­tion to pro­tect their well-be­ing and as­sure them of see­ing an­oth­er day.

It’s not too late, in­deed, it can­not ever be for this Gov­ern­ment to learn the les­son of the need for pub­lic sup­port for the for­mu­la­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of an­ti-crime mea­sures; and that such pro­grammes must res­onate and have pub­lic aware­ness and sup­port.

Or is it that the pub­lic au­thor­i­ties are too dense, too firm­ly ground­ed in the be­lief that they alone have all the so­lu­tions? The fact is, though, and that should have come home to the de­ci­sion-mak­ers, that it does not work so.

It is now up to in­sti­tu­tions such as the mass me­dia, joined by oth­er in­ter­ests in the so­ci­ety, to make it res­onate with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his min­is­ters that pub­lic opin­ion and in­put in­to the bat­tle against the crim­i­nal is su­pe­ri­or to the one-di­men­sion­al ap­proach it has so far adopt­ed.

Per­haps the time has come for PM Row­ley to leave even ear­li­er than planned, if he, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, is the one who has been stand­ing in the way of a full-scale as­sault on the crim­i­nal cul­ture; it may even be in the in­ter­est of his par­ty’s re-elec­toral hopes.