Gail Alexan­der

Cit­i­zens have a right to say “Trinidad is not a re­al place” when a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter can say T&T had a safe Car­ni­val af­ter a week­end of nine mur­ders, mul­ti­ple rob­beries, the shoot­ing of a tourist, and var­i­ous car­jack­ings.

UNC MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly made the com­ment in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day while speak­ing on an Op­po­si­tion mo­tion con­demn­ing the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to ad­dress crime.

Ram­bal­ly point­ed out that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley got an­gry with mem­bers of the pub­lic for us­ing the ex­pres­sion “Trinidad is not a re­al place.”

“He was so mad, he sug­gest­ed those who use that phrase could go to Ukraine. Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice on Drugs and Crime’s Glob­al Study on Homi­cide, T&T’s mur­der rate in 2020 was 28.2 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion. The mur­der rate in Ukraine in 2020 was 5.5 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion. There­fore, in 2020, T&T had a sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er mur­der rate than Ukraine,” Ram­bal­ly not­ed.

“Peo­ple are so fed-up of crime in T&T, they just might be will­ing to go to the war in Ukraine just to get away from this fail­ing Gov­ern­ment, be­cause for hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple, T&T al­ready feels like a war zone!”

Ram­bal­ly said when peo­ple say that “Trinidad is not a re­al place, they don’t mean that lit­er­al­ly, rather they’re util­is­ing irony to de­scribe the al­most sur­re­al ab­sur­di­ty of a sit­u­a­tion ... but we know if it’s one thing this thin-skinned Gov­ern­ment is fa­mous for, is that they can’t take pi­cong or crit­i­cism, or scruti­ny of any kind.”

He added, “When a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter can go on TV and tell cit­i­zens it’s not his job to make them feel safe, then cit­i­zens have a right to say Trinidad is not a re­al place.

“When that min­is­ter can watch a video of school chil­dren cow­er­ing in fear be­cause gangs are shoot­ing at each oth­er out­side and he tells the coun­try the chil­dren were over­re­act­ing be­cause the gun­fire was 200 feet away, then cit­i­zens have a right to say Trinidad isn’t a re­al place.

“When on Car­ni­val Day—the day that re­quires care­ful at­ten­tion and plan­ning by pro­tec­tive ser­vices—the min­is­ter can aban­don his post and go fete­ing on the road, then cit­i­zens have a right to say Trinidad is not a re­al place.”

Ram­bal­ly added, “I think T&T is a re­al place. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the prob­lem we face is that those on that side are not a re­al Gov­ern­ment.”

Ram­bal­ly called for word on the work of the team ap­point­ed by Gov­ern­ment last year to ex­am­ine the caus­es of crime and oth­er as­pects.

“We’ve heard noth­ing from this com­mit­tee. Are they meet­ing with civ­il so­ci­ety, law en­force­ment, and ex­perts on re­duc­ing gang ac­tiv­i­ty, nar­co-traf­fick­ing, or pris­on­er re­form and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion? How can a na­tion­al plan to deal with crime be craft­ed with­out any in­put from the na­tion it is sup­posed to serve?” he asked.

“I hope the re­port by this spe­cial com­mit­tee will be pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic be­fore the Cari­com meet­ing on crime in April.”