Envoy: TT victim of ‘political desperadoes’

TRINIDAD AND Tobago is the victim of a sinister plot to prevent the nation’s advance to developed nation status. These were the views expressed by TT High Commissioner to Canada, Arnold Piggott, about a newspaper report which alleged there was a terrorist presence and crime was out of control in TT. In a January 30 letter to the Canadian newspaper, Piggott said: “Most of us in TT are aware of the machinations of those who seek to displace the administration of Prime Minister Patrick Manning, to discredit the economic attractiveness of a uniquely successful energy-based nation and to disrupt the advance of a developing country which is daring to turn up on the doorstep of the First World, not with its cap in hand, but its sovereignty and dignity fully intact and its independence beyond purchase.”

He noted that two of the article’s main contributors, Chaguanas MP Manohar Ramsaran and Senator Robin Montano, are members of the Opposition UNC “which continues to have trouble reconciling its loss of the last general election after six years in the corridors of Government.” The TT High Commissioner said their analyses and that of the UNC concerning events in TT “are understandably skewed” and “no Government official was interviewed” in that article. “The TT Government, like those around the world, is battling with the unwelcome scourge of kidnappings, murders and other societal maladies  associated with the virtually unavoidable international drug trade.

Our own counter-fight has been comprehensively engaged. Millions of dollars and scores of specially trained and dedicated personnel have been allocated to the effort. Trinidad is currently low on the world scale of kidnappings, these markings being done by international insurance and crime statisticians. “Simultaneously, our solve-rate for kidnapping is one of the highest in the world. Truthfully, the overall crime situation is neither out of control nor presenting ‘internal threats of instability,’” he declared.