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“I WANT to apologise to the people of TT,” Fitzgerald Hinds declared on Monday, saying he was doing so on behalf of all the people who chose crime in the country.
The Minister of National Security delivered this awkward apology to the victims of lawbreaking as he made his much-anticipated contribution to the budget debate.
But why he felt the need to speak on behalf of criminals is a mystery. They are speaking loud enough already.
On Sunday, gunmen fired at the home of a police constable from the South Western Division. On Wednesday, Sherwin Bruce, a deputy commissioner of prisons, was subject to an attack by gunmen outside his home. The Police Social and Welfare Association on that day put lawmen on red alert.
Last week, the latest police statistics showed, notwithstanding a seeming abatement in August, the murder rate for September had worsened. The year remains on course to be, if not another record-breaking one, certainly another terrible one.
Every week, at least one prison officer is threatened, according to statistics Mr Hinds disclosed in Parliament earlier this year.
The latest attack on the hierarchy of the Prison Service has raised all sorts of reports and complaints about neglect of officers. What seems clear is that criminals, whether their communications are “jammed” or not, appear still to be calling shots.
In contrast, only a few weeks ago Mr Hinds was pointing out he had no direct responsibility for coming up with an anti-crime plan for the police. He certainly kept to that position on Monday.
While Colm Imbert, in his budget, had given what it was hoped would be a preview of more robust security measures, the substantive security minister had very little new to say.
For now, the Minister of Finance’s announcement of a trebling of police manpower per recruitment year will remain the hallmark anti-crime measure of this budgetary cycle.
Not seeing a need to apologise on his own behalf, Mr Hinds did the next best thing: he apologised on behalf of the very individuals he is at war with as minister.
It is the closest we will come to some acknowledgment of ongoing failings for which there is no real accountability in sight. Stability is the name of the Cabinet game, while criminals create chaos.
Meanwhile, the minister asks the nation to speak out and speak up, to give the police the intelligence they need to bring about even more busts and breakthroughs, like the one announced on Wednesday evening, before live television cameras, featuring a startling haul of intercepted guns.
But it will be hard for citizens to comply with such a request when there is a feeling that the criminals are literally calling the shots, attacking officers and civilians alike.
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