‘Deal with crime, drug trade, please’

FORMER Attorney General Ra-mesh Lawrence Maharaj declared that the only way Government can seriously deal with crime in Trinidad and Tobago is to eradicate the illegal drug trade. Addressing a regional conference of the National Workers Action Committee at the Arima Town Hall on Saturday, Maharaj disagreed with Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s statement that last week’s shooting at the Movie Towne cineplex was a case of “internecine warfare” which did not threaten the average citizen and that the increased flow of guns into Trinidad from Venezuela was linked to recent political disturbances in that country. Maharaj said illegal drugs enter this country from Venezuela and other Latin American countries and are either consumed or shipped to North America. “The illegal drug trade fuels crime,” he declared. Maharaj said while he was AG there was an intelligence network between local police and their counterparts in the United States and Britain but since he left that “gone through”.

The former AG claimed the Manning administration was unable to deal with crime and the police would be reluctant to tackle criminals if they believed a government was “meeting with and harbouring criminals”. Maharaj also said the Anti-Kidnapping Bill was a waste of time, saying the proposed legislation would be useless if criminals could not be detected and caught and wondered why the PNM and UNC were making a meal of this issue. He also said it was illegal for Government to demolish squatters’ homes built on State lands unless it had a court order to do so. Maharaj warned Government that unless it desists from such action, he would take the matter to court in seven days and get an order of mandamus to force Government to do its duty outlined under the Constitution. The former AG said the “courts would be on trial” and if he was unsuccessful in the High Court, he was prepared to fight the matter all the way up to the Privy Council. Maharaj said the country needed to undergo a social transformation and he had embarked on a crusade to achieve this end. He called upon the population not to let the PNM and the UNC cloud the issue with race and said whoever forms the government tends to discriminate against “the weaker sections of the population”. Vision on Mission president Wayne Chance said crime in the country had not reached the stage of “the Wild West”. “There is still hope,” he assured the gathering.