What nonsense from our Government!

THE EDITOR: It is most unfortunate that even some of the senior ministers of government are prone to making public statements from time to time that are so ridiculous that even a mentally retarded individual would have difficulty in accepting. In a recent emotional outburst via TV, the Minister of National Security who clearly stated on assuming office that he did not know anything about National Security and crime, was demanding an apology from a Los Angeles and a Miami newspaper for a story published recently relating to crime and kidnapping in TT, a country in which there have been 16 murders, a few kidnappings and several armed robberies within the first 13 days of the new year. Is this good individual really serious or has he lost it completely?

Next we have Minister Ken Valley informing the public that the government of TT holds only one percent share in LIAT and has not in any way subsidised that airline. All this government has done is to make significant loans from time to time amounting to millions of taxpayers dollars to some of our neighbouring Caribbean countries, so that they can keep LIAT in the air, although as we all very well know, LIAT like BWIA has been a consistent non-performing money loser for the past several decades. The fact Mr Valley is that, if John gives money to Harry to pay for Jack’s meals, John is unquestionably subsidising Jack’s meals, end of story. On an unrelated subject, it was recently reported in the media that, a police officer entered an office at Police Headquarters in Port-of-Spain with a fully loaded UZI machine pistol apparently in the fully automatic mode and with the safety “off” and somehow managed to squeeze the trigger (no gun fires of its own accord), resulting in ten rounds of 9 mm ammunition being discharged in about one second and injuring two other officers in the room in the process.
 
The question that I  keep asking is, what if any training at all are members of the police service given in the design and use of the firearms that they are issued to carry, before being turned loose on the public as well as their fellow officers? What clearly emerges from all these and similar events is that this country is being administered by a group of highly incompetent individuals who are grossly incapable of performing the simple tasks that they have been assigned to do, resulting in the progressive decline of every single government run institution. Of course the ultimate blame for our demise cannot be placed on inability of the administrators to efficiently perform the tasks to which they were appointed, but rather to the level of intelligence of the electorate who, from every indication seem to like it so.

MARTIN KAVANAGH
La Romaine