JAN­NELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

One po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst says the re­la­tion­ship be­tween crime and pol­i­tics will come un­der a mi­cro­scope over the com­ing months as the coun­try gets clos­er to the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

And Derek Ram­samooj main­tains that while cit­i­zens should ex­pect the State to play its part in the crime fight, pri­vate cit­i­zens and cor­po­rate T&T al­so need to play their part.

The po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst notes that a ma­jor chal­lenge for any ad­min­is­tra­tion is to what ex­tent cit­i­zens take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what is hap­pen­ing in their re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties, crime-wise, and how that crim­i­nal­i­ty is spread­ing not just in terms of ge­o­graph­i­cal spaces (i.e. crim­i­nals mov­ing from Trinidad to To­ba­go and vice ver­sa), but al­so so­cial and eco­nom­ic sec­tors.

“If you look at the lev­el of white-col­lar crim­i­nal­i­ty that ex­ists in our so­ci­ety, and the lead­er­ship that is re­quired to use the re­sources of the State, I think that is where the chal­lenge is,” he ob­serves.

“How does the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship of this coun­try—both the of­fi­cial Op­po­si­tion and the of­fi­cial Gov­ern­ment forces,” he notes, “come to­geth­er to ba­si­cal­ly ham­mer out an ac­cept­able so­lu­tion that can be im­ple­ment­ed by Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, as well as re­gion­al or the THA lev­el of gov­er­nance?”

Ac­cord­ing to Derek Ram­sooj, a suc­cess­ful crime fight goes be­yond putting more po­lice of­fi­cers on the ground or in­cor­po­rat­ing the lat­est crime fight­ing and se­cu­ri­ty tech­nolo­gies.

He as­serts that po­lit­i­cal will is es­sen­tial if this coun­try is to see any se­ri­ous re­duc­tion in crime.

“You have to de­bunk the pol­i­tics of the crim­i­nal­i­ty to see whether or not the lead­er­ship is do­ing what is re­quired for that type of tran­si­tion to be made,” Ram­samooj stat­ed.

“What we have, un­for­tu­nate­ly, are peo­ple in pol­i­tics who pro­claim to be politi­cians who are self-serv­ing in their per­son­al in­ter­est,” he ob­served, “as op­posed to do­ing what is re­quired for the coun­try at large.”

Ram­samooj as­serts that po­lit­i­cal par­ties must be­come rel­e­vant to the gov­er­nance of the coun­try.

He al­so points out that the time re­quired for con­sul­ta­tions on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form should be ex­pand­ed, to en­sure more peo­ple are in­volved in the process.

The po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst was a guest on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show.