WELL-SPOKEN FAILURES

EARLY in his prolific career, Mighty Sparrow sang about “Well-Spoken Moppers,” those eloquent scroungers who appear at Christmas time.

If calypso were still the artform of the common person, an artiste would have rendered a number about well-spoken failures, the articulate, self-important politicians who use a jumble of words to say little.

Note the puffed-up tone from senior government officials to the crime epidemic, amounting to mere self-satisfaction and complacency.

As current examples, the latest public expressions from Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley and National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds said one thing: The Government is still clueless on crime and the public must share the blame for the wretched state of affairs.

Rowley and Hinds once more failed to proffer any solutions to the violent chaos in the land, and, instead, passed responsibility to the public and called for support of the police.

This is a timeless manner of the authorities shirking accountability amid a raging crisis.

Rowley and Hinds have perfected a fine art of smoothly displaying eloquence and fluency, which, when stripped down, indicates nothing of substance.

Their latest verbal interventions were not for a comprehensive crime-fighting programme, blocking the illegal trade in guns and drugs, snuffing out the gangsters, protecting communities and providing more resources to the protective services.

Instead, in a bizarre assertion, Rowley said the society must review its relationship with criminal elements.

That is akin to his declaration of crime as a public health issue.

Neither pronouncement makes sense, especially to the growing number of overwhelmed crime victims.

In his declaration, Hinds threw lightning punches everywhere, blaming from the constitution to attorneys.

Essentially, it is everyone else’s fault.

Again, there were no announcements of anti-crime strategies designed to thwart armed and dangerous monsters.

“It is not a light switch,” Hinds said, ignoring the fact that the PNM faithfully promised nine years ago to utilise an “all-of-Government” approach to zap lawlessness.

Instead, Haitian-like anarchy is developing, with rampant home invasions, random shootings and an intensified extortion racket.

The assembly of words by the men in charge captures headlines but provides no comfort to a nation sinking deeper into an abyss of crime.

It is disturbingly evident that criminals have no fear or respect for law enforcement, a similarity Trinidad and Tobago share with Haiti, where there is no law and order, with gang bosses ruling the streets.

Hinds said that criminals have the advantage but that’s the result of chronic inaction, absence of competent leadership, failure to enforce workable tactics, and endemic police corruption.

The raw evidence suggests that the epidemic is worsening, while Rowley keeps faith with security and police bosses with wretched track records and without the public’s trust.

No doubt, Rowley and Hinds would expediently offer another round of well-spoken statements within the next few weeks, again designed to suggest that are on the job, even as more blood is spilled.

There will be ongoing public fury on social media and the daily press will write editorials like the Guardian’s intonation about “descending into chaos.”

But it will not change a single thing in this tortured land of murder and mayhem.

The country remains in the hands of well-spoken failures.