I could never be a politician. I don’t have the temperament for it. I don’t like public speaking, I never developed a talent for obfuscation and turning a blind eye to obvious nonsense makes me itch. I just do not have the belly it takes to get up in front of the people whose earnings pay my (substantial) salary and tell them that they are at fault for my failures. Naturally, I spend my time blogging for free instead. What can I say? We all have our callings. And it is clear that the Honourable Fitzgerald Hinds, National Security Minister and Minister of Parliament for Laventille West has found his.

Where else could a person stand before the people he has sworn to represent and repeatedly declare his failure to do so? In what other line of work could a person who is doubly-responsible for representing one of the most consistently-underrepresented and ignored areas of this nation dare to respond to criticism over his continued failure to address the community’s issues with a neighbourhood stroll? Especially given that his constituents have already made their feelings about this kind of PR stunt quite clear. I suppose, given what happened to those who dared to show their displeasure last time, no encores were expected this time around.

One thing for certain two things for sure, our National Security Minister is supremely unbothered by the way his words tend to create the perception that he isn’t particularly concerned about his constituents (locally or nationally).

After all, this is the man who:

• Immediately after taking up his previous portfolio as Minister of Youth Development and National Services, felt moved to write a whole Facebook post publicly shaming a man he didn’t know for daring to ask him for $20. That was just five months into the national pandemic shutdown. He later doubled down before deleting the post and declaring himself “one of the most generous people in the world.”
• Proclaimed that it is not his duty to ensure that citizens of T&T feel safe and secure because his duty is to encourage and support the agencies responsible for creating safety. As if these things are mutually exclusive and as if public dissemination of the government’s mission isn’t a major part of a politician’s portfolio.
• Accused sexual assault victims of choosing to profit from their attacks, comparing it to “two criminals making a deal over cocaine”.
• Paraphrased a controversial psychiatrist born in 1920 to support a punishment-oriented approach to handling crime. This is despite decades of evidence showing that it hasn’t worked here and that a different approach has been shown to work elsewhere.

Given all of the above, it should surprise no one that, after a recent shooting near a school in his constituency, he popped up to make sure that we all understood that the shooting itself happened approximately 200 metres away from the school. While the nation was reeling from the sight of primary school children cowering under their desks in fear of their lives and coming to grips with the fact that this is a regular occurrence for them, he was busy pointing out that you could fit just about two whole football pitches between the school and where the shooting occurred.

This would be a valid point if bullets fired by automatic weapons weren’t capable of flying as far as 500 metres and if we didn’t just have a very clear indication of just how wildly shooters are firing when children are around. There are places in this world where residents might be relieved to hear that bullets were flying outside of a school for a change, but this isn’t one of them. There are lots of surreal things about life in T&T, but, thankfully, we haven’t yet reached the point where we’re cool with situations like this (even if we do care less about certain communities than we do about others).

To call the video of those terrified children being shushed by their, no doubt, equally terrified teacher “quite misleading” is to display a disconnect on par with the statements that had the Prime Minister backpedaling just the other day. (The man is on yet another COVID quarantine, let him rest, nah?) To attempt to downplay the horror of the video by insisting that the children were in no physical danger while also admitting the schools in this area have shooting drills and those same students are likely doing the same thing at home is to admit that they were indeed in grave danger and have been for some time. Why else would they be on the floor? That the man responsible for protecting the interests of one of the most neglected and crime-ridden communities in the nation is the one saying all of this, even as he declares “I am a child of Laventille“, feels like a clear admission of his inability to do his job.

If only we could also take it (and all of his other disrespectful statements) as notice of his immediate resignation.