It is rare that such cooperation is seen in public affairs. But desperate times clearly call for desperate remedies.

The entire nation has been shocked by the developments in Enterprise which spiralled into a nightmare of epic proportions over the last few weeks.

Enterprise has long been a hot spot, but the carnage in recent days has effectively robbed all its residents of the right to live in peace.

Friday’s walkabout, by Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon, MP Fazal Karim and Chaguanas Mayor Gopaul Boodan, however, was a moment when all hands were on deck. This is the type of solidarity needed to comfort residents and the nation at large and to send a clear signal to criminal elements.

Yet, the exercise, as welcome as it was, has to be more than just a public relations exercise. It should set the tone for an agreement on policies and strategies going forward — involving both Government and Opposition- held constituencies.

More definitive interventions may also be required which do not involve the legislative realm.

Critics of Friday’s exercise are, however, right to point out that it should not have been made to look like a negotiation with criminal elements. The law and order must be enforced to the fullest extent. The police must take seriously any mention of illegal activity — whether involving guns, drugs, corrupt policemen or killer drones! — and investigate them.

We also have to stop endlessly boasting about knowing who the culprits are and not taking action. That said, if persons claim to have pertinent information then the police must listen and weigh this information accordingly.

Adequate resources have to be given to officers to handle all tips.

The public too should cease and desist from wasting police time by sending them on wild goose chases.

We have repeatedly written about the breaches of fundamental rights of the people of Enterprise.

They have not been able to live in a safe environment for some time now.

The police and the residents should be allowed to wrest control of the community.

We note elements within Enterprise have said crooked police officers have played a part in the break-down of order. If persons have information to substantiate such reports, this should be taken to the Police Complaints Authority (PCA), the Parliament’s Committee on National Security, the National Security Council and the Police Service.

The reform of the PCA should be dealt with as a matter of urgency, not only because it is pertinent to these recent concerns, but because the problem of a perception of rabid police corruption is endemic. For too long our society has accepted, as the normal state of affairs, the idea that the police service is compromised.

This damages the reputation of the hard-working women and men of the service and hinders the ability of the good apples to do their job.

The time has also come for a comprehensive overall of our firearms legislation. It is time guns are properly tracked. Also of concern is the role of social media in spreading gang propaganda.

This is an area that can be tackled by a bolstered cyber- crime policy.

The tour is over. It is time for action, moving together.

Two days after, my fellow columnist, Ian Lambie, had this column headline: Time to end the freeness.

(Newsday, March 29) I began to think what will help prevent this country from further socio-economic slippage. Many ideas swirl around, but building national consensus is like pulling-teeth in this country. .

Squatting has become so widespread and politically-encouraged, it is now seen as “our culture”, in some cases, protected by court judgments.

As for Lambie’s “stopping freeness,” well, I will use a sentence in Potter’s article: “The government obliges, especially near elections.” But who really listens? Over the years, what’s the value of making any strenuous mental exertion, of making any vigorous, determined effort to help yourself, to work hard for what you need? Why make the effort to build when you have “freeness and squatting” so lavishly available? Even when it subverts and demoralises the hard-working middle class who themselves are now tempted to share in the “freeness and lawless culture.” This is “broken windows” theory at large. In fact, before this US theory, we used to say, “Gee dem a inch, an’ dey go take a yard.” Same thing. This is different from helping the deserving poor.

As a small boy, I saw all my adult neighbours rushing off to work, some on bicycles, others briskly walking down San Juan hill to catch the early train to Port-of-Spain.

This required effort. It was a very poor neighbourhood but punctuality and the value of having a job were part of “our culture” then – 50 years ago.

A little older, I, too, rode to town, reaching work on time, happy to have my $12 a week messenger’s job, even putting on a tie.

Of course, I know things have changed — plenty cars, higher salaries, household appliances, Disney Land, patronage politics, etc. But Nappy Myers too should know, we really can’t bring back “dem ole’ time days.” But what we can and should bring back is the kind of effort so many people, even poor people, used to make to help themselves and their community. At 15, I was made secretary of the Santa Cruz-Quarry Road Village Council.

There was great respect for other people’s property and privacy. Squatting was rare. My single mother paid a pepper-corn rent for a half-lot way up the hill — no squatting. Today, greed and land speculation not only help energise squatting but put heavy pressure on the middle class shrinking pockets.

A bit overstretched but quite purposeful, the Guardian editorialised: “As we face considerable challenges from crime to corruption and economic contraction, it’s time to go back and be inspired by the hard work and determination of those who against all odds, not only survived but grew stronger and helped build this young nation.” (March 28) We need improved effort and integrity — from top to bottom — in our nation-building mission. We already have some, but it is still too little for what is urgently required.

Our economic planning and development remain upside down.

Logically, it takes human effort and mental exertion to make the money work, and more critically, when the money is in small supply. Causing others to do your job, wasting time is not development. Starting work at eight and sitting down from 10 is not development. Coming late often and leaving early from work is not development.

Imposing unfair wages and harsh working conditions is not development.

Putting a mark-up price of 200 per cent on grocery items is not about development.

“Thiefing” from the public treasury and state corruption are not about development. Development of this small, post-colonial society now requires concerted efforts, increased mental vigour and a national commitment to rise above its current stranded condition. More money alone will not do.

It takes g r e a t e r effort, an improved u n d e r – standing of nationhood.

And leadership.

Even head of the Islamic Front, Umar Abdullah, told Sunday Newsday that he attempted to contact Wakeel several times yesterday without luck. Abdullah had accompanied Wakeel on a tour last Friday in which National Security Minister Edmund Dillon and other top-ranking officials walked through several well-known hotspot areas in Enterprise greeting and meeting residents. Describing Enterprise as uneasy, the religious leader suggested that Sunday Newsday be very cautious while venturing into the area.

He noted that plans are afoot to have two Islamic scholars meet with residents as well as for a press conference scheduled for later this week. “These scholars would do classes with them and teach them the basics of Islam,” Abdullah said.

“Both sides want the killings to stop and it would not stop overnight.

What is happening now started a long time ago and we want it to stop.” The religious leader called for media personnel to try to refrain from using the word “unruly” as it has a negative connotation.

He suggested that the media instead use empowering words.

When Sunday Newsday visited the area yesterday, scores of residents of the troubled community claimed not to know Wakeel’s whereabouts or even his address.

Residents further suggested that the Sunday Newsday team not go in to search for Wakeel.

A resident said: “They cannot pay me to go across there.” At any subsequent mention of the word Krysis, he told the Sunday Newsday team, “Not me. Is better allyuh eh go down there (sic).” Police sources yesterday confirmed that Wakeel was not in custody in the Central Division but were unable to state his location.

Apart from the minister, the tour on Friday included Chief of Defence Staff, Rodney Smart; Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime), Wayne Dick; Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams and a contingent of police and soldiers.

Wakeel had promised to reveal all he knew about crooked police officers and where the illegal guns are.

“I promise to be just like you in whichever career I choose,” Amanda, 15, said of her father, Defence Force Warrant Officer 2 Omar Samaroo as she delivered a touching tribute at his funeral service, which was held under Hindu rites at El Carmen Village, St Helena.

“I will carry on your legacy of good leadership and organisational skills. If we had to list all of his wonderful qualities we will be here for days,” she told scores of mourners, who included Opposition MPs Dr Tim Gopeesingh and Rudranath Indarsingh.

Thanking her father for “15 wonderful years,” Amanda, a Fourth Form student of St Augustine Girls’ High School, described him as her best friend.

“I remember sometimes when he used to come home in the night and he used to sit on the stairs and while he was taking out his shoes, Mummy would come to the stairs and I would be doing school work and she would be like, ‘Amanda, look your heartbeat reach downstairs.’ He was my heartbeat. He was my life,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

Giving further glimpses into the family’s home life, Amanda said she would often ask her mother about the meals she prepared before arriving from school.

“Sometimes, when I would come home from school, I would ask Mummy what she cooked. She would say something like dhal, rice and baigan and I would say, ‘I don’t want to eat that and then Daddy would be like, you want a KFC and he would go and buy it for me,” she joked.

Supported by several of her cousins, Amanda said Christmas was always a very special time.

“Sweet 100 would have their countdown in September and Daddy would say ‘Make sure and put on the radio and listen to the parang and we would listen to it together,” she said, adding that her father’s birthday was on Christmas Eve and hers, on Boxing Day.

“So, it was a good celebration time,” she said.

Amanda wished her father eternal rest.

“Daddy, wherever your soul is, Mummy and I wish you nothing but peace. We love you. We miss you. But, but we are not God. You will forever live in our memories ans we will cherish it forever,” she said. Samaroo, 47, who served the Defence Force for close to 27 years, was discovered around 9.50 am on Tuesday with a gunshot wound to his neck at the TT Regiment’s Camp Cumuto base in Wallerfield.

He was taken to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope, where he was allegedly succumbed to the injury later that day.

There have been conflicting theories about the circumstances surrounding Samaroo’s death.

Homicide detectives believe he committed suicide but there also have been reports that several of his ribs were broken and that there were marks of violence about his body.

Another theory suggested that he had been tormented over work-related issues in relation to an alleged link to the investigation into the leaking of photographs of Attorney General Faris Al Rawi’s children holding guns during a security training exercise, last year.

The TT Regiment has since denied those allegations.

However, Opposition Senator Wayne Sturge has since called for a full-scale investigation into Samaroo’s death. He has threatened to take legal action against the Chief of Defence Staff and the State if his call goes unheeded.

Yesterday, though, Samaroo’s colleagues avoided the speculation, opting instead to celebrate his work in the Defence Force.

Captain Steve Benny hailed the affable, decorated soldier as a perfectionist.

“His contribution to the development of the special forces operations detachment was invaluable,” Benny said.

“Sam displayed the highest levels of discipline, physical fitness, tolerance and support for the organisation…..

We truly uphold Sam as one of the best. His level of awareness and operational readiness could have been questioned by none.” Benny recalled that Samaroo often joked that he was the best-looking soldier in the army.

“I can recall one interaction prior to attending a parade. I came down from the office and saw Sam looking at his reflection in the window.

He then uttered to me, ‘Sir, I am a good looking fella. I could not stop laughing and now I do the very same thing when I pass that exact location. Even in the subtle moments he made an impact,” he said.

Pundit Tota Ram Maharaj officiated.

Gopeesingh also spoke.

After the funeral service, Samaroo’s wife, Sherry, overcome with grief, clung desperately to the coffin bearing the remains of her late husband. She had to be restrained by her daughter and other family members.

Samaroo, who was given a full, military send-off, was cremated at the Caroni Cremation site.

Mt Hope, on Tuesday, hours after his body was discovered with a gunshot wound to his neck at the Camp Cumuto base, Wallerfield.

where he had been assigned for some time Although homicide investigators believe he had been shot, there has been speculation that his death could be linked to the probe into the leaking of photographs of Attorney General Faris Al Rawi’s children holding guns during a security training exercise at the Cumuto base. Sturge said in a statement on Friday that there must be a “formal.

independent and effective investigation” into Samaroo’s death. Failure to do so, he said.

will result in legal action against the Chief of Defence Staff and the State. Indarsingh also responded to Al Rawi’s call for Opposition support when the anti-gang legislation returns to the Parliament this week for consideration. He said he was maintaining a wait-andsee approach. “I will say given the state of the country in relation to crime, the Government is getting very desperate,” he said. “They (Government) has failed miserably over the last 19 months.” Indarsingh said the Opposition will peruse carefully the legislation when it comes to the Parliament. “At the end of the day, we are prepared to examine.

I am sure, from the point of view of the Opposition.

legislation that will work in the interest of the people of Trinidad and Tobago,” he said “We were worried about FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) but when the process was used rightly from a parliamentary point of view, we ensured that we protected the rights of the citizens of this country and obviously, once the law is in the interest of all and sundry, we will examine and we will proceed.” Indarsingh said the Opposition had not yet seen the legislation. “I am not prepared, surely like my leader and my colleagues.

we are not prepared to buy cat in bag as we would say.” During a joint news conference at the Ministry of National Security in Portof- Spain, Al Rawi said the anti-gang legislation will return to the Parliament.

this week, given the spate of gang-related killings in Enterprise, Central Trinidad.

and more recently, in Le Platte, Maraval and Bagatelle.

Diego Martin. He called on the Opposition to support the bill and other key pieces of anti- crime legislation as the Government grapples with the worsening crime situation

According to police at about 12.05 am yesterday Lindel Jerry, 33 from Windward Road, Pembroke was approached by two bandits near his home, one of them armed with a gun. The men robbed Jerry of a gold chain and $2,500 cash.

When Jerry’s uncle Patrick Prince, a 42-year-old watchman also of Windward Road, Pembroke, saw what was happening he approached the men but was shot in the stomach. The men then escaped on foot.

Prince is currently warded at the Scarborough General Hospital in a stable condition. Investigations are continuing.

According to reports, a driver from Gasparillo was proceeding along the San Fernando Bye Pass, close to midnight, when he hit a pedestrian.

He told police that he stopped his car and ran towards the man who was lying in the drain. The man was lifeless. He was wearing a brown T-shirt and blue jeans.

The police visited the scene and an autopsy has been ordered to confirm the cause of death. The deceased is of African descent.

I maintain that there’s a fine line between stupidity and faith and God never helped anyone who didn’t help herself.

If one were to judge from the conversations on some of the local radio talk shows, we can easily sum up that things are bad. But we don’t need talk shows to indicate that. We just need to listen to the conversation on the roads.

The country is on a journey to hell in a big basket. Do not be fooled. This is not a basket that will go floating down a river to be saved by any potential foster parent. We are destined to defend ourselves.

What do you do when there is no metaphorical roof over your head and a secure gate? You come together to protect your kind. House, land and wealth notwithstanding, many citizens have no life worth calling “quality”, in the sense that we use the word — “affordable cost of living”, “security” etc.

What we are now is a result of consecutive governments’ poor management and our own lack of proactive behaviour, among other factors.

Crime doesn’t simply escalate overnight. It takes little incidents over the years that we ignored, in the same way that we are ignoring them now. We “let things run its course” as some people say.

Well why don’t you just allow the rats to overrun your house? One day they’ll evacuate. Live in the squalor. They’ll leave one day. Have faith.

Where we are at now is our fault. Prices rise and we still buy. Somebody gets murdered at IAM and everybody talking in their house about what really happened but we still patronise the place. Little things.

But enough is enough. This is becoming a heavy women’s issue now, this crime. And women, of all beings, have enormous power. Whatever fights for women’s rights we have had, we have had to do it ourselves anyway.

I do not identify with the radical feminist movement but justice is justice.

So why not add the fight against crime to the list of the women’s do-it-yourself tasks? Sex-trafficking, rapes, murders — why are we still waiting? When do we begin to realise that we have the power to change the state of things? If as the saying goes, don’t doubt the stupidity of a group of people, we also should not doubt the power of the group.

Our powerlessness is only a veil. It reminds one of the oppressed, let’s assume they were slaves, who, despite the fact that they outnumbered the slave master, didn’t think of revolting and burning down the Great House. But, in places that they recognised that they were powerful their perseverance brought them freedom.

After the Westminster attack last week, Muslim women came out and stood in solidarity on the Westminster Bridge in opposition to the hateful attack.

Women. Because we all know that if anyone holds the keys to change, it’s a community of women.

As much as many of our societies thrust upon women the responsibility for upholding traditions, it is not oppression unless others make it so. It is empowering and we can use it at will. It’s a classic case of using an assumed weakness as a weapon.

After all the kidnappings and the murders and the atrocities on women and children, why I ask are women not shutting down workplaces and taking to the streets here? This is not England where human chains on Westminster Bridge send a powerful message. It was only powerful because it is tied to a history of such events. Not in Trinidad. We never had a model for that. This is a place where respect must be demanded, not earned. Earning is a concept fit for societies where the image of revolution is ingrained in the collective consciousness of the national and international market. In Trinidad the reins of power have to be snatched.

I will support that movement.

Peaceful protests do nothing in a space like ours. We have no history of revolution that makes a non-violent march revolutionary.

We have nothing to lose. The cost of living is high already.

This government, like every other has failed. Forget the next three years. Two years is enough for us to note a trend.

So, what do women have to lose by shutting down workplaces? Complete mayhem — open gunfire and rapes on the street in broad daylight — might be the next step for our c o u n t r y .

Perhaps it’s time to claim the peace of mind that is rightfully ours.

Derek Walcott’s passing, in the weeks leading up to the Bocas Lit Fest, had reminded me of a story I had written, where I described how I had been befriended by Mother Earth and the Earth People who lived in the Madamas forests during the 1970s. Mother Earth had given me instructions on how to survive the apocalypse which she prophesied was coming.

I was to take my family and go to join the Earth People, survive there, and help to “start civilization anew”.

Her message stayed with me through the following years, years during which terrorism and wars were increasing everywhere (we had our own terror in 1990), and the strength and power of the male of our species was waning into mental impotence.

I would look out for leadership, anywhere in the world and I could find none.

As the western world lunged headlong into “advancement”, we were discarding ages-old tenets of civilisation—family, loyalty, empathy and societal structure — but developing nothing of value in return.

As world leaders lurched ever closer to conflagration, time and time again, then withdrawing temporarily, nations like stickfighters circling, feinting and dodging in a dance of danger, we could do nothing but watch. We in this land watched without understanding, and continued to do what we do best: Lime and fete.

It was in this period and setting that the story of the consequences of going too far began to form in my mind. And I remembered the words of Mother Earth, and started to think that when the rockets began to fly, the peoples who might survive would be the peoples who could live in deep forests with “nothing”—nothing to own, nothing to lose. A story began to form, and I began to write.

I wrote in longhand on notepaper on a clipboard, and filed every few completed pages in a big folder. But I also went back into the forests, to Petit Tacarib, where much of the tale was written.

Somehow, I could not write at home, or in town.

When the story was written, I had it typed by a friend, who was paid a modest fee by another friend. I now had a manuscript! I began sending it off to publishers who were listed in books — online was just in infancy, and I was not there — still think I’m not! I sent off synopses and the like, and was either ignored, or given a curt no.

Everyone with whom I shared the work claimed they enjoyed and liked it, but people who print would not read it! Then, in 2005 a notice appeared in the media announcing that Derek Walcott’s Theatre Workshop was sponsoring literary prizes for Derek’s 80th birthday! There was a list of categories of works—short stories, plays, poems, children’s stories, but nothing for full length novels.

But so what? This is Trinidad! Try a thing! Friends helped in printing all the copies and making the CDs for submission.

Then we waited to see or hear what might happen? The organisers then added the category— full length novels, to cater for the several novels submitted! Everybody “try a thing!” The Writing Our World Awards ceremony was held the week before Christmas that year.

When they came to novels, my work was called for a special commendation, and I felt honoured to receive that certificate from Derek, the Nobel man himself! In a review of that initiative and evening, Kenneth Ramchand described my novel thus: “One of the strongest in this area was Peter O’Connor’s Renaissance: The Dream. This is a detailed, knowledgeable, and exciting evocation of the natural world and the art of living in the bush, and it is, at the same time an allegorical novel about reinventing our society away from extreme gender imbalance ……” I felt very proud, and hopeful that this might have been the beginnings of publication. I had the work edited (by another kind person for a peppercorn fee), which it did need, and began submitting again, with the same lack of responses. With the creation and development of the Bocas Lit Fest in 2010, the indefatigable Marina Salandy-Brown encouraged me tremendously, but only one of her contacts actually read the manuscript but said it was not their genre.

So it lies as a work waiting to be published, hopef u l ly before the world is destroyed!

I spoke about this in a recent column because it seems like every day, some religious group or an individual who recently dusted off their religious book is being quoted as telling us that we need to “pray for Trinidad and Tobago.” Religion and prayer in Trinbago is now a fad; everyone wants to be quoted as having religious views to show them as being spiritually grounded. In regards to the problems we’re having as a country, praying only assuages the same negative emotions that we need to motivate us to change the things we need to change in this country. In other words, prayer causes us to be docile and pliant, when we need to regain the ability to be outraged, fed up and damn vex enough to get up and go out to do something about the clueless people on top.

Just look at other countries; those people organise and protest any and everything, whilst we sit by and pray.

The citizens in other countries get results, whilst we are fed and swallow the same crap, whilst asking God to change our diet before the next meal of nonsense.

So why exactly is our country spiralling downwards despite all this prayer? Isn’t God a Trini? Or did He renounce His citizenship? Why isn’t He helping us by answering our prayers? Well, the answer is simple: we don’t deserve it.

We love to talk about prayer, yet we are a vengeful people who love injustice when it is convenient to justify behaviour and rhetoric. We allow the government to trample upon the rights of many people in the name of national security without saying a word. We boast of the bacchanalia called Carnival of which debauchery is an integral part and pray for God to keep us safe on the road while we wine and drink. We refuse to recognise the rights of the homosexual community because “God said so.” Our prisons are a cesspool of injustice and all we do is justify the way prisoners are treated at the Remand Yard. The accused languish in prisons for years, many of whom walk free, and we are angry at the outcome, but not in the least bothered by the decade a man just lost due to an inefficient system.

How in any deity’s name can we expect our country to be blessed when this is what we have to offer? The so-called religious leaders and people in this country treat religion like a cafeteria or a place like El Pecos where they pick and choose the tastiest parts of their holy books to consume and disseminate in furtherance of their causes. If people believe that their religious book was written by their infallible deity, how then do they throw out some of their deity’s rules because of convenience? In very simple terms, it is hypocrisy.

These religious zealots do not have the moral authority to pray for or with anyone because one cannot condone injustice and call for the blood of prisoners via hangings in Woodford Square, while at the same time asking for the “blood of Jesus” to be applied on our country.

Cafeteria religious people have crusades and days of prayer and fasting, while they look on in amusement at unconvicted men packed into cells like sardines and forced to sleep on cold hard concrete floors. How dare we ask any deity to bless us when we cannot even love our own compatriots — literally.

So, when religious people support unjust laws that ensure people are imprisoned automatically for 120 days, how dare they ask for justice for others in society? When religious people cherry- pick their scriptures out of context and refuse to give rights to homosexuals who want to love whomever they choose, but at the same time pray to “bring the love back” to Trinidad and Tobago, it is an insult to any deity who preaches love. People who invoke God at any given opportunity to push religion as the only solution to our problems whilst supporting and implementing all sorts of injustices do not deserve to have their prayers answered. We really need to stop wasting time by praying to these deities when we are not ready to receive the blessings.

Until we are ready to treat our own properly and with love, no blessings will be falling upon Tr i n i – dad and Tob a go anytime s o o n .

And if you don’t b e l i e v e me, just read your s c r i p – tures.