Violence a response to austerity measures

While firearm offences are common and seem to be increasing as more and more guns are reported to be taken off the streets, there has also been a noticeable increase in non-firearm-related violence and murders.

Added to this, there seems to be an alarming increase in irrational and spontaneous violence — murder by “road rage.” Random acts of extreme violence are reported almost daily by the media.

One forensic pathologist was moved to report on the sheer brutality of a murder-suicide where a woman’s throat was slit “from ear to ear” and the incision extended to the “back of the neck.” Abductions and rape are occurring far more often than before.

Police shootings have increased. It is as if a curse has descended upon the nation.

And in true Trinidadian fashion, we have been treated to a plethora of thoughts regarding the likely explanation for the nearly palpable upsurge in societal violence and murderous rage.

Blame has been directed to the security services, to existing corruption within these institutions; an audit into the Police Service has been initiated (yet again); senior police officers have been fired, and Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley in capitulation has suggested that “we are a violent society.” Many factors have been advanced as contributing to this rise in violence that has everyone frantically searching for solutions so that we can as a nation return to some semblance of normalcy.

We do indeed as a people have a short memory. The very same sequence of events was at play during the ANR Robinson administration.

In fact, it had started during the George Chambers regime around 1984 and peaked when Robinson and the NAR government of which he was the leader began to implement IMF austerity measures (1987).

This Rowley Government has been traversing the same road while protesting that the austerity programme he has embarked upon has nothing to do with the IMF — an agency that the Government admits it invited as adviser since coming into power.

Randolph Virchow (1848) has been credited with the wise observation that “politics is nothing but medicine on a grand scale.” To her credit, Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s leadership embraced this axiom as she insightfully created a novel ministry, the first of its kind in this country — the Ministry of the People.

This ministry’s focus remained fixed on the people. By any description, it was a “new public health” ministry, the object of which was social protection.

There will always be a debate on whether, with economic contraction, governments should increase spending so as to stimulate the economy or reduce spending through austerity.

We are being taught our second lesson today: austerity kills.

Like other unwise governments, Rowley’s PNM has set its focus on reducing spending so as to reduce our deficit. To this end, he has made drastic and unstudied cuts in social protection programmes in the face of increasing job cuts, rising unemployment, creeping currency devaluation, and a significant increase in the cost of living, precisely when people can least afford it.

It is the austerity — the hardship and deprivation — that are the cause of our present escalating violence and increasing mortality.

Violence in society is a response to the violence of “austerity” from the Rowley Government.

Steve Smith via email