AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) is point­ing the fin­ger at “young black males” for be­ing the chief per­pe­tra­tors of crime in this coun­try.

But pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get claims that the Gov­ern­ment will turn a blind eye to this be­cause it could af­fect its sup­port­er base.

Speak­ing at JTUM’s post-Bud­get news brief­ing yes­ter­day at CWU Hall in Port-of-Spain, Ro­get ac­knowl­edged how con­tro­ver­sial his blam­ing one eth­nic group could be per­ceived, but he chal­lenged peo­ple to con­tra­dict him based on facts.

“The de­mo­graph­ics in that, that some peo­ple do not like to hear, the ma­jor­i­ty of per­sons that we know, we see com­mit­ting those crimes are young black men, they don’t like to hear it but let me say it be­cause I am not afraid to say it,” Ro­get de­clared. 

He even of­fered a spec­u­la­tive guess as to why he felt em­pow­ered to make that state­ment.

 “They are at the low­est rung of the eco­nom­ic lad­der in a cesspool of hope­less­ness where they feel that the on­ly way out is crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty,” the JTUM pres­i­dent added. 

Ro­get then blamed the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led Gov­ern­ment for not tak­ing an in­ter­est in find­ing out why “this group is so pre­dis­posed to com­mit­ting all these mur­ders. 

“And I’m not say­ing that oth­er groups don’t eh, be­cause you now have the Venezue­lan crim­i­nals join­ing gangs and al­so com­mit­ting mur­ders. But the ma­jor­i­ty, and I would like any­body to con­test me, the ma­jor­i­ty of those per­sons com­mit­ting those das­tard­ly acts are young African males,” Ro­get posit­ed. 

Ro­get went as far as to ac­cuse the Gov­ern­ment of ig­nor­ing the is­sue so as not to up­set a seg­ment of their sup­port­ers.

“While they will look for this group to sup­port them, they will nev­er do any­thing to lift those who are the low­est rung of the eco­nom­ic lad­der out of the dol­drums they are in. And once you con­tin­ue to sup­port them, to be PNM un­til you’re dead, you will be a dead PNM-mite,” Ro­get pos­tu­lat­ed. 

He warned whom he called “PNM syco­phants” to be aware that their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion would not save them from the hor­rors of crime.

“So, they can rant and rave and mis­be­have, pull out their weave, pull out their hair, call-in in their talk show pro­grammes with their syco­phants, that is the re­al­i­ty.

“And you know the re­al­i­ty is that they too will be im­pact­ed and the on­ly time that they feel it is when the crim­i­nal comes home, when they in­vade their home or when they kick peo­ple on the streets in full view of the pop­u­la­tion,” Ro­get said re­fer­ring to a re­cent rob­bery along Char­lotte Street in Port-of-Spain. 

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go for a re­sponse to Ro­get’s claims, how­ev­er, the com­mit­tee asked for more time to com­pre­hen­sive­ly re­view his state­ment and then re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly. 

Ques­tions and re­quests for com­ment were al­so sent to Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings but he did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to calls or text mes­sages. 

Back in April this year, fol­low­ing a spate of home in­va­sions and rob­beries in the Aranguez dis­trict, Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj as­sert­ed that “ur­ban youth” along the East-West cor­ri­dor were tar­get­ing peo­ple of East In­di­an de­scent in Aranguez, San Juan, and across the coun­try.

His com­ments were im­me­di­ate­ly chal­lenged as be­ing racist by a res­i­dent who at­tend­ed the me­dia con­fer­ence.

The pun­dit al­so went on to say the per­pe­tra­tors of crime, “all have the same com­plex­ion, they all come from the same eth­nic group”.

‘Some­body de­cides you should die’

Mean­while, con­tin­u­ing his macabre pro­nounce­ments on the state of crime in the coun­try, Ro­get said life or death now comes down to a sim­ple equa­tion.

“The on­ly rea­son why you and I are alive to­day is be­cause some­body has not tak­en the po­si­tion to take your life out as yet, some­body has not de­cid­ed that you should die. The mo­ment in this coun­try that some­body de­cides that you should die, you are go­ing to die be­cause the Gov­ern­ment and all its agen­cies can­not pro­tect you,” Ro­get lament­ed. 

He again crit­i­cised the Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion for not tak­ing full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the prob­lem.

Ro­get al­so ques­tioned why peo­ple were not be­ing ar­rest­ed for the re­cent large gun find by po­lice of­fi­cers go­ing as far as haz­ard­ing a guess.

“Be­cause every two by four coun­try would set up sting op­er­a­tions, but you know why they can’t do that? They will not do that be­cause of the peo­ple who have high con­nec­tions in the Gov­ern­ment who are the im­porters,” Ro­get al­leged.

He added he was not afraid to make such claims as he wants “ab­solute­ly no PNM friends”.