Reduce crime in 90 days

In outlining the details of his anti-crime plan at the launch of the new socio-political ACT TT movement at the La Joya Complex in St Joseph yesterday, Maharaj charged that through its inability to deal with the nation’s crime problems, Government had in fact "declared war against the people" and "embraced" the 66 gangs with 500 members which National Security Minister Martin Joseph identified as the persons responsible for crime in TT today.

Declaring that all of Government’s anti-crime expenditures and anti-crime plans have failed to bring crime under control in TT, Maharaj vowed: "If I were in a government and this crime problem arose, I would execute a plan which is both tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. I would have a short-term plan and a long-term plan in order to sustain the relief got in the short-term plan. I would in 90 days, bring the crime problem under control and then execute the long-term plan to sustain that relief."

Stating that Government’s first duty was to ensure the population’s security, Maharaj said he would move swiftly to establish an aggressive intelligence network between local law enforcement agencies and their US and British counterparts to gather information about the perpetrators of serious crimes in TT.

He claimed that such a network no longer exists in TT and foreign governments would be reluctant to provide criminal intelligence data to any government or police service in TT "if they believe we are in partnership with the criminal gangs." Joseph said the National Security Ministry has formed an incident coordinating centre to coordinate the intelligence activities of local cops with external agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in tackling serious crimes in TT.

Maharaj slammed Government for using the Opposition’s refusal to support the Police Reform Bills in Parliament as an excuse for not controlling crime in TT. Declaring that those bills provided long-term solutions for crime, Maharaj said Government must have two Cabinet ministers with "hands-on approach" to tackling crime and such a combination ( himself and Brigadier Joseph Theodore) worked well under the former UNC regime because the ministers "spent a lot of time micro-managing our ministries."

Maharaj vowed that once the criminals were apprehended, steps would be taken to ensure that the evidence against them would be "airtight" and they would be competently prosecuted and convicted. Adding that the people of TT were the nation’s jury, Maharaj said the population has no choice but to find Prime Minister Patrick Manning and his administration guilty of failing to protect the nation against the criminals.

The former AG promised that he would ensure the necessary investigations are undertaken so that the courts could confiscate the profits of criminals, trace all money laundered in criminal enterprises and return ransom monies to the families of kidnapped victims.

Maharaj said his long-term crime plan would focus on law and prison reform, equal distribution of the nation’s wealth and proper development programmes to prevent people from entering a life of crime. The former AG also said the Opposition UNC had failed to force Government to account to the population on the crime issue and any government which could not "scrupulously obey the law and set an example to promote a culture of lawful conduct" does not have the moral authority to remain in office and must do the right thing by calling elections.

Maharaj also said TT’s current governance system was flawed and the electorate must have the option of recall over all parliamentarians,*9 including the government, to remove them before their term of office if it believes they are acting contrary to the wishes of the electorate and against public interest.