Incestuous Politics & Noise...

With the release of the Nelson Street 21 came the type of jubilation and celebration worthy of a Mandela or a Gandhi, yet in reality, who we were dealing with here were a bunch of petty thugs, hoodlums and wanna be gangsters who have been terrorizing people unrestrained and to whom the law and its enforcement has become a nuisance to be overcome rather than a guide and a consequence. While none of us took pride in seeing these 'innocent' looking young men being arrested, shackled together and whisked away in the backs of vans like animals (and many of us said so publicly), with the release of the CCTV footage showing just how brazen some of these same people could be when committing invasive advantageous robberies, the same many were forced to rethink our initial assessment.



The Opposition for their part in deciding to capitalize on the public's chafing at being made to live under rules may have inadvertently found themselves coming down on the wrong side of the issue and are appearing to support crime. It is supremely ironic that the same PNM that could not put a dent in crime when in government are now in fact raising their voices on behalf of the alleged criminals, as if redemption from the consequences of bad choices is hallowed ground.



Are we really fighting here for our right to be lawless?






If that is the case then we are far further gone than any of us realize. Psychologists tell us that our criminal underclass says more about us than we care to know, and in Trinidad it seems to expose the fact that we are an indisciplined, unruly people.

The DPP has been thrust into celebrity status for upholding his end of the law, but what was taken from it and made a fuss of was 'we' DPP slap down 'your' AG, as if the two arms of the State's legal machinery have now been remade into some sort of political front line.

 


Who is this helping?

Many if not all of our problems exist in the dual realms of either our unwillingness to observe the law or of others charged with the responsibility of enforcing it, failing to so do. Now that the script has been flipped and choice has been removed from all the participants in this tragic dance, many of the same people are now clamoring for representation against the same law enforcement we were clamoring for when the PNM were in Office, for which we ostensibly voted them out of Office for, and I think we need to ask, will the real T&T please stand up?

To my mind the State of Emergency has given us some important successes, but because it creates opportunity for abuse by those so bent it should be done away with as soon as possible. The police, the army, the citizenry and the underworld are now well aware of two things: That this government is serious, and that a State of Emergency works at suppressing crime. Should it even be considered a crime fighting tool despite its origins and what it was created for?

Absolutely. Anyone who says that we were not living in a state of utter chaos and lawlessness before is a liar, and the ONLY thing left to try, the absolute last resort that no one wanted to use worked and worked well. Now the questions we need to ask are where do we go from here and how. What did the State of Emergency give us that we did not have before, and how do we import those things into our normal state without ceding ground to the criminal class once again.

Someone needs to tell Dr. Rowley and crew that you cannot just oppose everything outright and expect to be considered and option or a part of the solution. Regardless of how good it may make the government look in the short term, if you are for country first and have the interest of the people at heart then have the balls to say we failed at crime, you have a go at it. The PNM is coming across like a band of noisemaking dogs barking at everything that moves from behind their fence and again I need to ask, who is this serving?

The opposition needs to put its house in order and realign itself with the political reality as it exists today, that the people are not remotely interested in a government soft on crime. No amount of noise can distract from that truth, and the people are definitely no longer interested in noise.