Why shoot the messenger?

THE EDITOR: It is indeed amazing that it takes the International press to expose the incompetence and inability of the Minister of National Security to show that he can in fact speak. However, he unfortunately utilises his energy in the wrong direction, as he has stated that he intends to work feverishly to discover who caused “the leak” to the LA Times, instead of spending more time in actually dealing with the real problem and reducing the out of controlled state of crime in our country.

For those who have not picked up on it, the PNM is back at its old game, by attempting to focus on killing the messenger, this time being the LA Times, with a lot of talk of Carnival sabotage, UNC involvement and additional nonsense, in the hope that the country’s attention would be diverted from the actual story published which shows the incompetence and inefficiency of this Government in dealing with crime. For the education of the poor National Security Minister who says that he finds it “peculiar” that a Canadian newspaper made a similar release around this time last year, alluding to the fact that it is to sabotage Carnival, maybe he should beware that as much as we would like it to be, unfortunately the world does spiral around Trinidad Carnival, but major newspapers in fact take crime statistics at the end of each year and compare it to verify whether a Government is being effective to deal with crime, especially if their citizens usually frequent that particular country, so the reason why International newspapers continue to publish the true state of security in our country is because the crime statistics continue to break records on an annual basis, and if the Prime Minister and Martin Joseph are saying that the article is not true, then I challenge them to sue the LA Times with immediate effect and stop grand charging.

The LA Times, just as the Canadian tabloid that published similar statements regarding the PNM’s failure to deal with the crime issue, is an internationally recognised and impartial newspaper, so who is Prime Minister and Martin Joseph trying to fool, other than the tunnel visioned Balisier lovers, who could never accept the fact that their worshipped Government can do no wrong and is in fact sleeping with the enemy, which may very well be the main cause why we are under siege. Well to those I say, wake up and start facing reality. It is a statistical fact that murders increased every year when PNM returned to power from 1991 to 1995, that these same stats show a decrease in murders every year when UNC took over from 1995-2001, with it reaching the lowest ever of 93, and with the return of the PNM it started increasing again, and breaking records year after year.

So they continue to attempt a lot of fancy Public Relations footwork and cosmetics to fool us into believing that they really want to stem the crime menace, by bringing in Thomas Clayton at a cost of millions in 2001 as an Advisor with no results. They decided that it is time to fool us again and now spend over $5 million for Professor Mastrofski, who has absolutely no impressive track record of reducing crime anywhere, as he is recognised more for his expertise as, hear this, “a Political Analyst,” which is really one who tries to make a Government look good, and they hire him to do what Senator Professor Ramesh Deosaran has already produced, which is a concept to improve the performance of the Police Service. So please do not be fooled. This Government is unable, or should I say unwilling to protect the Trinidad and Tobago people from the criminal elements.

CAPTAIN GARY GRIFFITH
Advisor to the Opposition on National Security matters