On Wednes­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, while pi­lot­ing the mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for a fur­ther three months, chose to tar­get a mi­nor­i­ty group whose en­ter­prise and dis­ci­pline over gen­er­a­tions have en­abled it to ac­cu­mu­late wealth.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has a long and trou­bling his­to­ry of po­lit­i­cal fig­ures—whether in of­fice or seek­ing it—re­sort­ing to rhetoric that risks in­flam­ing eth­nic and class re­sent­ment in or­der to dis­cred­it a tar­get­ed mi­nor­i­ty group. Such in­ter­ven­tions may score short-term po­lit­i­cal points, but they ul­ti­mate­ly deep­en so­cial di­vi­sions rather than mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dress the struc­tur­al caus­es of in­equal­i­ty or crim­i­nal­i­ty.

The pat­tern is not new. In 1994, ahead of the 1995 gen­er­al elec­tion, Bas­deo Pan­day pop­u­larised the term “par­a­sitic oli­garchy” to de­scribe a small group he claimed re­tained con­trol of the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial re­sources re­gard­less of which par­ty gov­erned. Patrick Man­ning, for his part, fa­mous­ly in­voked “Mr Big” to sug­gest the ex­is­tence of well-con­nect­ed mas­ter­minds and un­touch­able fi­nanciers be­hind se­ri­ous crime and or­gan­ised gang ac­tiv­i­ty. No­tably, nei­ther set of al­le­ga­tions ever trans­lat­ed in­to con­crete le­gal out­comes.

The in­con­sis­ten­cy in po­lit­i­cal rhetoric is al­so strik­ing. In 2012, then Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar praised mem­bers of the lo­cal Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty for their en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it and growth—from hum­ble be­gin­nings in­to a for­mi­da­ble busi­ness class. Yet, more re­cent­ly, she has adopt­ed a sharply crit­i­cal tone to­ward the so-called “one per cen­ters,” link­ing them in deroga­to­ry terms to the op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and even to el­e­ments of the “drug mafia.” Such re­ver­sals on­ly re­in­force per­cep­tions that these nar­ra­tives are po­lit­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient rather than ev­i­dence-based.

Against this back­drop, Mr Je­re­mie’s re­marks in Par­lia­ment are cause for con­cern. In de­fend­ing the SoE ex­ten­sion, he ref­er­enced the re­vo­ca­tion of US visas for cer­tain Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als, sug­gest­ing that in­di­vid­u­als with­in a par­tic­u­lar “per­cent­age group” had fall­en out of favour with US au­thor­i­ties. His warn­ing was stark: “If you be­have as gang mem­bers do, you shall be treat­ed in ex­act­ly the same way,” and fur­ther, that for those with­in “the one per cent … Teteron awaits.”

If these com­ments sig­nal a will­ing­ness by the Gov­ern­ment to de­ploy pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­ders (PDOs) against white-col­lar ac­tors sus­pect­ed of fa­cil­i­tat­ing se­ri­ous crimes—traf­fick­ing, kid­nap­ping, ex­tor­tion, or mur­der—then this rep­re­sents, in prin­ci­ple, a wel­come shift. Any se­ri­ous strat­e­gy to re­duce vi­o­lent crime must con­front not on­ly those who pull the trig­ger, but al­so the net­works that sus­tain them. Any fi­nancier, mon­ey laun­der­er or com­plic­it in­di­vid­ual op­er­at­ing with­in the un­der­world’s ecosys­tem must not be be­yond scruti­ny.

How­ev­er, rhetoric must not sub­sti­tute for due process. If the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al pos­sess­es cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion about in­di­vid­u­als en­gaged in il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties, the ap­pro­pri­ate course is clear: use the full force of the law to bring charges and place ev­i­dence be­fore the courts. Threat, sug­ges­tion and in­nu­en­do can­not and must not re­place pros­e­cu­tion.

At the same time, the Gov­ern­ment would do well to fo­cus on strength­en­ing the in­sti­tu­tion­al ma­chin­ery re­quired to se­cure con­vic­tions. The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions re­mains un­der-re­sourced, con­strained by short­ages of skilled per­son­nel, in­ves­tiga­tive sup­port, and tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty. With­out ad­dress­ing these de­fi­cien­cies, even the most ag­gres­sive an­ti-crime pos­ture will strug­gle to de­liv­er durable re­sults.

In the fight against crime, cred­i­bil­i­ty mat­ters. That cred­i­bil­i­ty rests not on point­ed rhetoric, but on con­sis­tent ap­pli­ca­tion of the law, re­spect for due process, and sus­tained in­vest­ment in the in­sti­tu­tions that up­hold jus­tice.