In an editorial published on August 11, headlined: ‘Our Lawless State’, the Sunday Guardian made the following assertion: “It is no longer a stretch to say that Trinidad and Tobago has many areas that resemble narco-states where drug cartels, not the government, call the shots.”
Additionally: “Search online for ‘failed state’ and the Encyclopedia Britannica will give you this description: ‘Failed state, a state that is unable to perform the two fundamental functions of the sovereign nation-state in the modern world system: it cannot project authority over its territory and peoples, and it cannot protect its national boundaries.’ It hurts but it’s true: if we are not there yet, we are but a hair’s breadth away.”
The newspaper cited serious crimes as evidence for its troubling assertion. These were the allegations surrounding the recent arrest and firing of a senior PNM government minister; the heinous murders of seven fishermen from central Trinidad; an “execution-style”, precision killing of a drug lord; charges laid against former Attorney General Anand Ramlogan; and daily circulation on social media of tragic outcomes at crime scenes.
The responses by Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Keith Rowley to this disturbing editorial were predictable governmental spin. Said Rowley: “We have serious challenges like many countries in the world. Whatever challenges there are, we are required to meet it on a daily and hourly basis... There are problems with crime in Trinidad and Tobago that is a major challenge for the government and the people, and we will face it. We will never concede that we are a failed State because we have not been able to deal with our circumstances.”
Since then, Rowley has continued to deny Trinidad and Tobago is at the brink. Addressing an audience of government supporters last week, he said that citing evidence of escalating, ongoing criminality as the basis for concluding Trinidad and Tobago was on the road to failure as a state was to sell the country short.
As a diaspora with investments and deep family connections back home, Rowley’s reasoning leaves us in bewilderment. In our thinking, each daily episode of crime connects to a wider and troubling narrative, for emerging out of this unfolding plot are indicators Rowley and his government are not in control; that, as the Sunday Guardian has intimated, the criminals are calling the shots. It hurts, but it is true: Trinidad and Tobago is at the brink.
In our minds, allegations of criminality, and crimes committed with the rawest inhumanity as drowning seven fishermen are virulent and corruptive, and are far more than major challenges, as Rowley insists. We believe the arrest of a senior PNM government minister, a well-planned, precisely orchestrated execution of an alleged drug lord, his wife, and henchmen, and honest fishermen callously tossed overboard into the ocean, are constitutive of a state that is unravelling at its core.
This unravelling is a spectre that has been noted before, with warnings issued by senior and respectable leaders. Among them are former principal of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie, who said: “Between our security lapses and our record on poverty, we are a failing state; indeed, one vulnerable in the extreme, and on the verge of failure.”
Also, during his inauguration, the late President George Maxwell Richards said: “The world calls a failed state one in which there is war, where there is famine and where there is social disaster. [Trinidad and Tobago does] not fit that profile. However, there is evidence, when we consider crime, education, youth alienation, inter alia, to lead us to recognise that the underpinnings of strong statehood are not as sound as they should be…”
Sadly, Trinidad and Tobago is at the brink. If Rowley’s government continues to lose control of the country to criminals, then he should make way for better leadership.