Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Fitzger­ald Ethel­bert Hinds first en­tered the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 1995 as the MP for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant. He would con­tin­ue serv­ing the con­stituen­cy for 12 years.

Be­fore tak­ing up his cur­rent po­si­tion as the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in April 2021, he pre­vi­ous­ly served as the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, the Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and In­for­ma­tion, the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, as well as an op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor.

This year, how­ev­er, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, now Laven­tille West MP, made quite a splash, but in hind­sight, per­haps for all the wrong rea­sons.

Re­gard­less of a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter’s work be­hind the scenes, he is ul­ti­mate­ly judged, fair­ly or not, on crime sta­tis­tics.

And on that ba­sis, it is hard to ar­gue with the view held by many cit­i­zens that Hinds has failed.

Hinds will go down in his­to­ry as the first na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter to have more than 600 mur­ders dur­ing his tenure.

The coun­try ar­rived at its high­est-ever mur­der toll of 551 mur­ders with 33 days to spare in 2022.

Out of every 10,000 cit­i­zens, more than four peo­ple were mur­dered.

In Au­gust alone, 68 peo­ple were killed.

The low­est to­tal in any sin­gle month for the year was 36 mur­ders.

The sec­ond-high­est mur­der to­tal in the coun­try’s his­to­ry came in 2008, with 550.

While cit­i­zens ex­pressed an in­creas­ing un­ease about the rock­et­ing mur­der toll as the year pro­gressed, the min­is­ter’s com­ments did lit­tle to aid his cause to get pub­lic back­ing.

In Hind­sight, 'HIND­Speech' would prove prob­lem­at­ic.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s web­site, the min­istry’s mis­sion is “To ad­vance na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment by cre­at­ing a safer and more se­cure so­ci­ety through the en­hanced col­lab­o­ra­tion among all stake­hold­ers, in­tel­li­gence-based de­ci­sion-mak­ing and strength­ened in­ter-agency struc­tures and sys­tems.”

Yet, some­how, in Feb­ru­ary, the head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter told re­tired morn­ing talk show host Fazeer Mo­hammed that his du­ty was not to en­sure that cit­i­zens feel safe and se­cure.

“No, my du­ty is not to en­sure that peo­ple feel safe and se­cure. My du­ty is to en­sure that those or­gan­i­sa­tions and agen­cies that are re­spon­si­ble for the pub­lic’s safe­ty, and bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, that they are clear about what the peo­ple through the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy is, that they are pro­vid­ed with the re­sources that they need and that I lend en­cour­age­ment and gen­er­al sup­port to them. That’s my du­ty,” Hinds said.

Nine months lat­er, Hinds struck again. In ear­ly No­vem­ber, a shock­ing video of ter­ri­fied stu­dents of Rose Hill Ro­man Catholic Pri­ma­ry School duck­ing for cov­er from near­by gun­fire went vi­ral.

The footage trau­ma­tised the stu­dents, par­ents and the pub­lic, with peo­ple de­mand­ing im­me­di­ate ac­tion be tak­en to pro­tect the chil­dren.

Yet, in re­sponse to the vi­ral video, this is what Hinds had to say, in part, via a Face­book post.

“The video of the chil­dren of the Rose Hill RC School, in Laven­tille, lay­ing them­selves on­to the ground, at the sound of au­to­mat­ic gun­fire; and in which the voice of the teacher telling them “shh­h­h­hh”, sig­nalling that they keep qui­et; was quite mis­lead­ing. You could be for­giv­en for think­ing that the gun­men were ac­tu­al­ly on the com­pound. They were not! In fact, the ac­tu­al shoot­ing took place about 200 m away. This video, which went vi­ral, came to my at­ten­tion on­ly yes­ter­day. The event oc­curred on Mon­day,” he said.

And then, Min­is­ter Hinds, with mere days left in the year, claimed on De­cem­ber 19 that it would be nice if he could feel the na­tion's full sup­port.

Hinds said, “I came in­to this busi­ness un­der­stand­ing that 70 per cent of so­ci­ety does not sup­port this ef­fort or want to see us suc­ceed. How did I ar­rive at 70 per cent?... at the lev­el of the Par­lia­ment, I say 50 per cent want to fight rather than join in the fight and then the oth­er 20 per cent, I would say are those who are like­ly to com­mit crime and are in­volved in it and an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour and so on.”

Ac­cord­ing to Hinds’ maths, 980,000 peo­ple in T&T do not sup­port him or the crime fight, while 280,000 cit­i­zens are crim­i­nals.

So, even by his own ad­mis­sion, he does not have the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence, yet, he con­tin­ues to have Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley’s sup­port.