Basketball and crime fighting: Another re-routing
Like the towering crime problem, basketball star Shaquille O'Neal
stood between the Prime Minister and Jack Warner. A pitched tent and a
big cheque brandished: problem solved. Young, black males, living under
the watch of the nation's garbage, take their usual place as the face of
criminal enterprise.
If the PM wishes to pitch a tent, take this advice. Pitch tents in the downtown core, and the residential areas with the massive houses and slipways to the sea. Announce and fearlessly execute search warrants on the homes and businesses of the big players in the trade in drugs, arms and violence. Bring in the big-shots of crime.
Days before redirecting the small-man to basketball instead of crime, Warner managed to re-route opposition to his national security appointment. As such, the distracted debated the course of the billion-dollar highway to Point Fortin instead of Warner as minister. Now, with the decrepit Beetham as backdrop, the PM forgot her Government's previous shack-attack under the State of Emergency and renewed love for the community. This is another Warner re-routing, diverting attention to the lower rungs, away from the folks at the top.
The mixed views on Warner are evidence of the country's desperation to save itself. The day after his appointment, Warner and Collin Partap trampled the separation of powers, and those mixed views resurfaced. They show off a country repressing its inherent sense of justice in favour of the means assumed necessary. In time we will discover that it is difficult to defend the law by breaking it, a matter the SOE should have taught.
Even the Attorney General (AG) found a cover for Warner, as usual. The AG's statement that Warner's presence at the removal of protesters, "prevented the desecration of religious deities", is ole-talk. Warner is neither a minister of religion, nor the minister responsible for ecclesiastical affairs. Clearly, there is a well-known legal path for dealing with protesters, if it comes to that. It does not help the optics that contrary to Warner's assertion, he did not merely "show-up" or "turn-up" at the protest site with arms folded. Newspaper photos show the two ministers toting away protest paraphernalia, and carrying with them the chronic misunderstanding of office which besets politicians.
With protest tents down, the PM and Warner pitched tent in Beetham.
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| Basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal gets ready to lift Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar for a slam dunk |
If the PM wishes to pitch a tent, take this advice. Pitch tents in the downtown core, and the residential areas with the massive houses and slipways to the sea. Announce and fearlessly execute search warrants on the homes and businesses of the big players in the trade in drugs, arms and violence. Bring in the big-shots of crime.
Days before redirecting the small-man to basketball instead of crime, Warner managed to re-route opposition to his national security appointment. As such, the distracted debated the course of the billion-dollar highway to Point Fortin instead of Warner as minister. Now, with the decrepit Beetham as backdrop, the PM forgot her Government's previous shack-attack under the State of Emergency and renewed love for the community. This is another Warner re-routing, diverting attention to the lower rungs, away from the folks at the top.
The mixed views on Warner are evidence of the country's desperation to save itself. The day after his appointment, Warner and Collin Partap trampled the separation of powers, and those mixed views resurfaced. They show off a country repressing its inherent sense of justice in favour of the means assumed necessary. In time we will discover that it is difficult to defend the law by breaking it, a matter the SOE should have taught.
Even the Attorney General (AG) found a cover for Warner, as usual. The AG's statement that Warner's presence at the removal of protesters, "prevented the desecration of religious deities", is ole-talk. Warner is neither a minister of religion, nor the minister responsible for ecclesiastical affairs. Clearly, there is a well-known legal path for dealing with protesters, if it comes to that. It does not help the optics that contrary to Warner's assertion, he did not merely "show-up" or "turn-up" at the protest site with arms folded. Newspaper photos show the two ministers toting away protest paraphernalia, and carrying with them the chronic misunderstanding of office which besets politicians.
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| Ministers Partap and Warner remove items from re-Route protest site |
With protest tents down, the PM and Warner pitched tent in Beetham.
