Gail Alexan­der

Things in T&T are “falling apart” on crime, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Rod­ney Charles in­di­cat­ed yes­ter­day.

Charles did so in pi­lot­ing an Op­po­si­tion mo­tion to rep­ri­mand Gov­ern­ment for its fail­ure to ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent the surge in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in T&T and al­lud­ing to re­port­ed re­marks by Guyana Vice Pres­i­dent Bharath Jagdeo that T&T was “falling apart.”

Charles main­tained that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds should have been re­moved in the re­cent reshuf­fle.

A YouTube video has shown Jagdeo ad­vis­ing on Guyana’s oil and gas thrust and get­ting non-oil/gas jobs ahead so Guyana wouldn’t be­come like poor­er coun­tries. He said things were falling apart in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with no jobs and neg­a­tive growth.

Charles used the is­sue to por­tray his view on T&T’s crime sit­u­a­tion. He said Guyana’s VP Jagdeo “tells his cit­i­zens that ‘T&T is falling apart’.”

But Charles added that he didn’t like to hear “things were falling apart” in T&T.

“ I love my coun­try,” Charles said.

Lat­er on in his sub­mis­sion, Charles again re­ferred to “things falling apart.” He al­so quot­ed au­thor Chin­ua Achebe when he not­ed, “The cen­tre can­not hold.”

Charles said he want­ed T&T to be bet­ter than Guyana, Bar­ba­dos and oth­er is­lands.

But we have to work to­geth­er,” he said.

Slam­ming the “com­plete in­com­pe­tence of this PNM kak­istoc­ra­cy and their clue­less­ness in the fight against crime,” he added, “Min­is­ter af­ter min­is­ter has come and gone dur­ing this ad­min­is­tra­tion’s time, each worse than the last and yet the on­ly peo­ple who feel com­fort­able enough roam­ing freely are crim­i­nals.”

He said the biggest in­sult to­wards cit­i­zens oc­curred last week “when the Prime Min­is­ter reshuf­fled his Cab­i­net and failed to re­move the worst, most clue­less, ig­no­rant, in­com­pe­tent Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty we’ve had to date.”

“The Prime Min­is­ter must state why he saw it fit to keep Min­is­ter Hinds when we’re wit­ness­ing lev­els of bru­tal­i­ty and a bla­tant dis­re­gard for hu­man life from crim­i­nals as nev­er seen.”

Charles tar­get­ed Hinds through­out his ad­dress un­til re­mind­ed that the de­bate wasn’t a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against Hinds but on crime.

“Six years they have been in of­fice and what do they have to show for it? Over 3,000 mur­ders, 15,500 rob­beries, 11,700 bur­glar­ies 1,200 home in­va­sions.”

Charles added that (Hinds) had failed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and every sub­di­vi­sion.

“And the Prime Min­is­ter has failed the coun­try, every cit­i­zen and every vic­tim of crime by al­low­ing the min­is­ter to re­tain his post. There’s a lead­er­ship cri­sis in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty,” he said.

He al­so said the new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al must not come with a suite of leg­is­la­tion like his pre­de­ces­sor with­out stat­ing pro­ject­ed re­sults.

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