For­mer UNC Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has said that the de­ci­sion to call a state of emer­gency mere months be­fore a gen­er­al elec­tion, is an in­dict­ment of the Gov­ern­ment.

Bharath, in a me­dia state­ment, said that af­ter nine years of ram­pant crime and al­most 5,000 cit­i­zens trag­i­cal­ly lost, this re­flects in­com­pe­tence by the gov­ern­ment and is al­so a "glar­ing ex­am­ple of re­ac­tive gov­er­nance at its worst".

"This move ap­pears less like a gen­uine at­tempt to ad­dress the root caus­es of crime and more like a des­per­ate ploy to sal­vage shat­tered pub­lic con­fi­dence," Bharath said.

He added: "The ab­surd­ly ridicu­lous ex­cuse of gang reprisal wears thin on a tired and be­sieged pop­u­la­tion, fed up of ex­cus­es and ex­cess­es. Min­is­ter Hind's lo­qua­cious ex­pla­na­tion would have brought no com­fort that any re­lief is like­ly. The gov­ern­ment has known for the last nine years where the gangs re­side and op­er­ate and who their mem­bers are, and have been co­matose to their ac­tions. The use of high-pow­ered il­le­gal weapons in mur­der­ous sprees is noth­ing new."

He ar­gued that a state of emer­gency might tem­porar­i­ly sup­press crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, but it does not re­solve sys­temic is­sues like cor­rup­tion, in­ad­e­quate polic­ing, lack of eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties, or the break­down of trust in law en­force­ment and the ju­di­cia­ry.

"It is a short-term plas­ter on a fes­ter­ing wound caused by years of in­sti­tu­tion­al degra­da­tion. True lead­er­ship would have pri­or­i­tized proac­tive mea­sures, com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, ju­di­cial re­forms, and in­vest­ments in ed­u­ca­tion and em­ploy­ment to pro­vide sus­tain­able so­lu­tions," Bharath said.