#BTColumn – Government struggling to deal with crime

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.

by Dr. Derek Alleyne

Hearing Prime Minister Mia Mottley try to blame the last administration is getting sickening. Back in September I put the following on social media and reproduce it now to show that MAM is only about show! She lacks the conviction to tackle violent crime. Being seen in the company of some of the country’s well-known drug men, some of whom even presented themselves with invitations to the opening of Parliament a few years ago, has sent the wrong message.

Add to this the Barbados Labour Party making laughing sport in 1999 at David Thompson’s call for national consultations on crime and violence

One of the lessons that this government should have learnt by now is that it is easy to criticize but a challenge to find solutions to problems. The major ingredients of the learning exercise would have come from the persistence and the overall state of violence in Barbados and across the region.

I reminded a friend about the “Not bout Here, not bout here” boast made by Prime Minister Mottley as she commented on a spate of violent deaths in January 2019. The occasion was an interview and the PM, in addition to many promises, was dishing out ridicule to the last administration and in particular the former chairman of the Police Service Commission.

In that 2019 interview, the PM gave a list of remedies and promised Barbadians that they will be “free to walk this country without fear”. She insisted that she would not allow them to be held to ransom by any group of people”.

It is not my intention to engage in a comparison of one violent episode with another or to cast the state of safety in Barbados next to our regional states. That would serve no purpose because in as much that crime and violence affect all of us arresting the scourge is the responsibility of all.

That is why the PM’s mockery of the call by the Opposition back in 2019 for details of the plan to address what was an alarming spate of gun violence was so disturbing. The PM in asserting her knowledge of matters associated with crime informed that to reveal the plan was akin to a domino player exposing his hand. The PM disclosed that the Government would utilise a method of deployment, a legislative agenda, funding, law enforcement and social services components to tackle the anti-social behaviour.

The Prime Minister asserted that the Government was so serious that the AG and the Minister of Home Affairs were “tasked to carry the loads they had to ensure that the Government was in a position to tell Barbadians that the place was safe”.

Nineteen months later the Prime Minister has been loudly silent on crime. What she has done is fired the Minister of Home Affairs. In the meantime Barbadians have taken to the streets to draw attention to the state of bullying following the beating of an eleven-year-old, and another 10-year-old stabbed his sister to death.

It is no surprise that this Government has struggled to arrest the level of violence. As far back as 1999 the BLP administration of that day took a defensive and backward stance on the matter of crime and violence.

Dealing with issues that invite total stakeholder input requires building trust and soliciting involvement. Crime is not the BLP’s problem but a Barbados problem. But having made crime and violence a political toy when in opposition, the challenge for the government now is that it lacks the needed conviction to move the process forward.

Good governance is about taking hard decisions and the responsibility for any fall out that flows from the decisions. In the Emancipation statement the PM announced “the hand of intervention has been and is still needed to remove the obstacles placed in our way”.

The sources of violence and the factors that sustain it are multifaceted. Bold statements and empty rhetoric are not solutions. Any plans that can have lasting and penetrative impact on the social, economic and cultural forces that sustain the level of violence must involve all stakeholders. The Government having isolated key stakeholders in the fight to tackle violence now finds itself struggling to respond. In that 2019 interview the PM promised to set up a small unit directed at anti-corruption and counter-terrorism and to make law and order the first charge on the public financial resources.

COVID-19 has eaten away at the economic foundations of this society and has put all sectors under pressure. The PM needs to inform Barbadians what has been done since that long and wordy interview and in the new environment what Barbadians can expect from this government.

Dr. Derek Alleyne is a trade unionist, social commentator and member of the Democratic Labour Party.