Panday blasts PM’s ‘TikTok governance’ amid crime surge

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of en­gag­ing in “Tik­Tok gov­er­nance,” urg­ing her to “put down the phones” and con­front what she(Pan­day) de­scribed as a wors­en­ing crime cri­sis.

“End the dig­i­tal per­for­mance. Deal with the cri­sis,” Pan­day said in a strong­ly word­ed state­ment yes­ter­day, as she ar­gued that crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go is spi­ralling de­spite re­peat­ed as­sur­ances from the Gov­ern­ment.

De­clar­ing that “crime is win­ning,” Pan­day said cit­i­zens no longer judge safe­ty based on of­fi­cial up­dates or so­cial me­dia mes­sag­ing, but on their lived re­al­i­ty.

“Peo­ple do not mea­sure safe­ty by tweets, graph­ics or care­ful­ly cu­rat­ed so­cial me­dia posts. They mea­sure safe­ty by whether their chil­dren come home alive, whether gun­shots wake them at night, whether po­lice sta­tions are se­cure and whether fam­i­lies can live with­out fear,” she said.

Her com­ments come against the back­drop of a vi­o­lent week­end, which she cit­ed as ev­i­dence of the coun­try’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ing se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion. Pan­day point­ed to the mur­der of busi­ness­woman Shan­ice Mor­ris in Bal­moral Park, Ch­agua­nas, the killing of mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cer Anusha Ever­s­ley in­side a sta­tion in San Fer­nan­do, where firearms and am­mu­ni­tion were al­so re­port­ed­ly stolen, and the fa­tal shoot­ing of four peo­ple, in­clud­ing a nine-year-old J’Lay­na Arm­strong along La­dy Young Road.

“If the coun­try is safer, why do we not feel it?” she asked.

Pan­day al­so chal­lenged the Gov­ern­ment’s re­liance on emer­gency pow­ers, not­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go has been un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE) for 276 of the last 355 days since the ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice, equat­ing to 77 per cent of its tenure.

“Since the de­c­la­ra­tion of yet an­oth­er SoE on March 3rd, 49 days ago, 46 peo­ple have been mur­dered. How does a gov­ern­ment ex­er­cise ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers for most of its term, yet or­di­nary cit­i­zens still feel aban­doned?” Pan­day ques­tioned.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion failed to ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress crime, Pan­day ar­gued that the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment has not de­liv­ered a mean­ing­ful al­ter­na­tive.

“For al­most ten years in Op­po­si­tion, you said you had the an­swers, you promised a crime plan. Where is it?” she asked.

She called for what she de­scribed as “re­al ac­tion,” in­clud­ing in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing, strength­ened bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, im­proved wit­ness pro­tec­tion and more ef­fec­tive in­sti­tu­tions.

“The peo­ple need more than head­lines and hash­tags; they need ac­tion,” Pan­day said.