Patience running out, Mr Manning
On the day we buried the body but not the memory and the pain of 14-year-old Zoreen Ansara Mohammed’s death, the media reported that a 12-year-old student was sexually assaulted in a secondary school in south Trinidad and that Cedros police were searching for a fisherman who reportedly took an 11-year-old student into some bushes and raped her as she walked home from school.
With the earth still wet around Mohammed’s earthly grave and the bloodstains still on diapers that the 12-year-old has to wear because the bleeding would not stop, the media also reported that Prime Minister Patrick Manning left on a whirlwind political peacekeeping tour of six Latin American countries to ensure there are no confrontations during the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Port-of-Spain next month. Not a tear shed for the children and the adults of this country. It’s the same PM Manning who said to the nation in early March that he would reveal his plan to fight crime after the April summit.
Manning’s decision to turn his back and leave the campaign against crime to the letter writers, editors and columnists reminds me of the Biblical expression, “let the dead bury the dead,” and in that sense he is absolutely right and we are wrong. We cannot make the Prime Minister treat the citizens of this country fairly. We cannot force Manning to feel our pain. We can only allow our pain to cause us to do what is right with resolution and determination.
The nation of Madagascar has ended up with a young disc jockey, still too young to be the President, on its frontline with a message of impatience for change. Prime Minister Manning’s family is safe behind the walls of the Diplomatic Centre and in the heavily armed vehicles provided to them by taxpayers. We the people have to worry about the dead among us and we have been very patient about it, until, soon enough, our disc jockey runs the rhythm.Clarence Rambharat
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