Crime scene confusion

Jack Ewatski

It was just a really bad week for Jack. Ewatski, that is. The former Winnipeg police commissioner found out Trini-style that nothing makes noise like competing suppliers, competing politicians and the glancing chance of bobol. And while the country debated the technical details of Jack's aircraft, his conduct is proof of bureaucratic fragmentation in the fight against the crime and social decay generated by the last 20 years of PNM and UNC politics.

Once the PM and National Security Minister believed themselves to be a safe distance from Jack's aircraft, both lapped up Donna Cox's revelations on Jack's embryonic flying squad. But then Cox went one step further and used Jack's bad idea to justify an even worse one: the PNM blimp. And just like every other time in the past 20 years of PNM versus UNC politics, Cox ignored the fact that the country finds itself dealing with insurmountable crime and social decay made worse by the PNM's failure to deal with the root causes between 2002 and 2010 and before that.

Of course heightened crime and corruption were reasons the PNM was booted out in 2010, and the People's Partnership put in. But the replacement of the PNM by the People's Partnership does not reduce the complicity of the PNM in the crisis either created or perpetuated during the party's periods in Government. Even as Cox and other PNM MPs and supporters go about their jobs of criticising the People's Partnership Government, they could also drop the sanctimonious attitude which got the country into the deep end in the first place. If the People's Partnership failure to do any better than the PNM upsets the country, then the PNM's refusal to acknowledge its horrible performance on crime is aggravating. And this is why Ewatski's flying squad revelation has led us to see the greatest danger to the country on this crime issue.