In this morning’s Trinidad Guardian the Prime Minister is quoted as saying Trinidad & Tobago is a violent society as a means to escape answering for the violence that exists, but I want to put him to strict proof to back up that statement. He blames the lockdown for school violence seeming to forget the decades of school violence that predates any pandemic. He acts surprised at illegal weapons in the country but he himself admitted to 37,000 illegal weapons way back in 2017, a number that mushroomed to over 40,000 when presented in the Senate, yet nothing of substance has been done to stop the flow of illegal weapons through the unchecked shipping containers leaving the port or to secure our porous and welcoming borders, or to remove those that are already here. He speaks of camera contracts as if they are rocket science, but Ministries such as National Security are allowed pre-qualified suppliers to fast track issues deemed urgent, so why the foot dragging on this particular issue?
Instead of addressing the root causes of these killings such as gang drug-selling turf disputes, poverty, the systemic inadequacies and inefficiencies of the justice system, lack of mental care in our public health system, the abandonment of the lowest rung of society by social services, lack of real job opportunities for the young, the failure of the education system that leaves almost 50% of the mostly poor youth behind, this is the nonsense response? Where is his evidence to back this claim up? The majority of our violent crime is confined to PNM die hard communities, how does he explain that? If we are a violent society how come we’ve never had one political clash of violence between competing interests in our hyper political climate? One racial conflagration? How does he explain our mostly violence free carnivals? This is Keith Rowley’s limited intellect exposed. We as a nation need to cancel and rebuke this indictment and call on the government to take responsibility for the failing of government to address violence where it exists and not blame everyone for the actions of some. Social development is treated as a joke. Violent crime and the growing gang culture are the punch lines to that joke. We need to hire a Prime Minister who possesses the capacity to address the issues affecting society, and not fancy dancers quick with a word that makes no sense when examined against reality or their own words prior. These are serious issues and the media needs to hold his feet to the fire and force him to defend these statements with facts of his own, otherwise the public has to see Keith Rowley for who he is, someone completely out of his depth with no clue as to what is wrong, or how to fix any of it.
Phillip Edward Alexander
Political Leader
Progressive Empowerment Party
