It is said that suc­cess has many fa­thers, but fail­ure is an or­phan. Trans­lat­ing this in­to po­lit­i­cal terms, it means politi­cians will claim cred­it for suc­cess and avoid blame for any fail­ure.

Apart from the per­for­mance of the econ­o­my, the is­sue of per­son­al safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty for cit­i­zens. Vi­o­lent crime, home in­va­sions, and the mur­der rate have gal­vanised pub­lic opin­ion as crime has con­tin­ued to es­ca­late. Ex­tor­tion is com­mon­place, and all cash and car­ry busi­ness­es are feel­ing the heat. Most will pay up rather than suf­fer the con­se­quences.

Gun crime is per­va­sive, and the gun­men are in­dis­crim­i­nate. Five-year-old Ani­ka Guer­ra’s mur­der in Moru­ga along with her fa­ther was not col­lat­er­al dam­age. She was shot five times, in­clud­ing a shot to her head. Per­haps she knew and could have iden­ti­fied the killer. Per­haps it was a mes­sage to oth­ers. Per­haps we will dis­cov­er the rea­sons. More prob­a­bly, we will nev­er know, as the de­tec­tion rate in mur­der cas­es is less than 15 per cent. She is not the on­ly child to have been mur­dered.

Whilst vi­o­lent crime and the mur­der rate are in­deed a cause for con­cern in many Cari­com coun­tries, that is no com­fort to T&T cit­i­zens who feel nei­ther safe nor se­cure. The key con­sid­er­a­tion is the suc­cess of mea­sures to re­duce crime and in­hib­it crim­i­nals. The Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments at the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence last Thurs­day were not re­as­sur­ing.

Per­haps he mis­con­strued the crit­i­cism di­rect­ed at him and the ad­min­is­tra­tion as blame. Hence his as­ser­tion, like that of the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, that he is not to be blamed for the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion. He went on to lim­it his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. He de­fined his “wuk”, “his job”, as mere­ly “to en­sure that whose job it is to iden­ti­fy and to chase down and bring them (crim­i­nals) to jus­tice, that they are on the job …”

The com­ment is pas­sive, not ac­tion-ori­ent­ed. It sep­a­rates the po­lit­i­cal au­thor­i­ty from the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for find­ing and pro­mot­ing all the pos­si­ble so­lu­tions. Al­though the Prime Min­is­ter recog­nis­es the ex­is­tence of se­ri­ous so­cial prob­lems, he does not ac­knowl­edge his Cab­i­net’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­dress the prob­lems.

In ev­i­dence, the Prime Min­is­ter un­veiled his leg­isla­tive agen­da for the rest of this ad­min­is­tra­tion’s term. Since this is his last year be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion, one pre­sumes that the mat­ters dis­closed are na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties. Yet there were no pro­pos­als for ad­dress­ing crime in the wide list of mat­ters to be ad­dressed. How could crime not be a pri­or­i­ty? Per­haps this ex­plains the Prime Min­is­ter’s arms-length ap­proach to crime per­pe­trat­ed by the “dev­ils” amongst us.

It has been wide­ly al­leged that gov­ern­ment con­tracts have in­di­rect­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed gangs or “com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers.” A Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has pub­lished ev­i­dence con­firm­ing that gang lead­ers or per­sons as­so­ci­at­ed with gangs have re­ceived gov­ern­ment con­tracts. No po­lit­i­cal par­ty has clean hands in this re­gard, even if this may have hap­pened “in­ad­ver­tent­ly”.

More im­por­tant­ly, nei­ther par­ty has com­mit­ted to find­ing a way to pre­vent this prac­tice. What will be the out­come if the purse strings are loos­ened in an elec­tion year?

Hav­ing two min­is­ters in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is un­like­ly to achieve bet­ter re­sults than those achieved in the past. Prime Min­is­ter, what will you do dif­fer­ent­ly over the next 12 months to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion?