The ex­tent of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide on crime in T&T was ful­ly dis­played on Thurs­day when Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine spoke dur­ing a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) ple­nary ses­sion about the wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion on the is­land.

Au­gus­tine framed his ap­peal for more fund­ing to fight To­ba­go crime with sta­tis­tics about the in­creas­ing num­ber of crim­i­nal gangs and the dra­mat­ic in­crease in mur­ders and oth­er vi­o­lent crimes.

He al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to man­age the is­land’s se­cu­ri­ty needs.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, there was some push­back from Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris, who chal­lenged Au­gus­tine on his claims that the sit­u­a­tion could have been much dif­fer­ent if To­ba­go had been giv­en the re­sources and sup­port it need­ed.

The di­ver­gent po­si­tions adopt­ed by the Chief Sec­re­tary and Mi­nor­i­ty Leader on deal­ing with To­ba­go’s crime prob­lem are iden­ti­cal to the po­lit­i­cal spar­ring that has been tak­ing place here in Trinidad be­tween the gov­ern­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, all this po­lit­i­cal pos­tur­ing is lead­ing nowhere. Apart from ap­peal­ing to their re­spec­tive sup­port­ers on a sub­ject that con­tin­ues to have a dele­te­ri­ous ef­fect on the coun­try as a whole, these state­ments from elect­ed of­fi­cials are not yield­ing any re­al re­sults against crime.

What is miss­ing from all this di­a­logue is a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy for vi­o­lent crime pre­ven­tion.

Rather than trad­ing blame, T&T’s de­ci­sion-mak­ers should be di­rect­ing their en­er­gy to­wards turn­ing the in­for­ma­tion avail­able to them in­to pub­lic pol­i­cy, en­sur­ing more ef­fec­tive use of the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty re­sources.

The rapid­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion in To­ba­go — once a haven of peace even as the rest of the coun­try faced es­ca­lat­ing crime — cries out for more mean­ing­ful co­op­er­a­tion among politi­cians to sup­port the ef­forts of the var­i­ous se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.

The pres­ence of 28 crim­i­nal gangs on an is­land the size of To­ba­go (120 square miles) should be set­ting off all kinds of alarm bells.

The im­pli­ca­tions are se­vere for the is­land’s tourism-based econ­o­my if the sit­u­a­tion is al­lowed to get more out of con­trol.

To­ba­go record­ed its high­est mur­der count last year, in ad­di­tion to an up­surge in shoot­ings, wound­ings and oth­er vi­o­lent crimes, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Both is­lands are now fac­ing mur­der­ous on­slaughts from the groups that have splin­tered from the orig­i­nal Mus­lim and Ras­ta City gangs.

The new­er crim­i­nal gangs, with younger and more vi­o­lent lead­ers, are fre­quent­ly com­ing in­to con­flict with each oth­er, with dead­ly con­se­quences for their ri­vals as well as the or­di­nary cit­i­zens, who be­come col­lat­er­al dam­age in their on­go­ing street wars.

A strong, co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse is re­quired to halt their con­tin­ued vi­o­lent as­saults on the peace and well-be­ing of the na­tion.

It de­mands a lev­el of co­op­er­a­tion cur­rent­ly not seen be­tween the PNM, UNC and the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty, which con­trols the THA.

The politi­ci­sa­tion of crime, dri­ven by the de­sire for elec­toral gains rather than the ad­vance­ment of the coun­try, gives an ad­van­tage to the crim­i­nals, who flour­ish with­in the re­sult­ing par­ty di­vi­sions.

The PNM and UNC squan­dered an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bridge the po­lit­i­cal di­vide on crime when they failed to agree on arrange­ments for mean­ing­ful crime talks. It is time to try again for those talks, this time with the in­volve­ment of the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Par­lia­ment and the THA.