Seukeran: TT is at war; I am afraid

Junior Minister of Trade, Diane Seukeran, pleaded from her heart to the Opposition to help stop the current flood of kidnappings and killings when she spoke in the Budget debate on Tuesday evening in the House of Representatives.

Evoking emotion in listeners, she challenged those MPs and Senators who refused to do so to pack their bags and leave the country. Lamenting a 14-year-old kidnap victim from her San Fernando West constituency, Seukeran openly admitted that she lived in fear of crime, and said Opposition MPs too were potential victims. Seukeran initially won Opposition applause by acknowledging the crime situation, saying: “This country is under siege, There is a criminal element, growing and feeding. Bold, brass-faced, callous, brutal, less than human. Every member of the Government is conscious of it, that’s what I want to say categorically.” 

Obviously distressed at her constituent’s misfortune, she said: “In San Fernando West an old San Fernando family have their 14-year-old child kidnapped. At Carlton Bay an 18-year-old girl was shot in the stomach. As a citizen, as a mother, as a grandmother, I feel it. Drive-by shootings — what kind of country are we living in? It’s time to take back the country. You ask why the Government is setting up a Special Crime Fighting Unit, instead of saying the Government is trying to do something. Crime has no colour. The mother whose child is shot feels the same pain whether black or white.” She also shared her own fear of crime: “I am a woman driving home alone at night, don’t you think I’m afraid? I am afraid. I have children, I have grandchildren playing on the lawn. Every MP in this House is affected by crime. The trend is getting worse.”

Pleading for Opposition support to help stabilise the country, she said:  “This is about life and death, about fear, about the life of a child. It’s either you support it or do not, and the country must understand that. If you don’t support this, every Opposition member and Senator, see the businessmen leaving, and pack your bag and leave! A child’s life is hanging on the line in San Fernando West. Who’s child will it be next? Yours? The MP for Chaguanas has a wife with a beautiful voice — When she goes out singing, and doesn’t come back, what will you do?” Seukeran concluded: “This isn’t the time to be a pacifist or a consciencious objector. The country is at war!”