TT: Bomb threats a hoax

By late afternoon, the police were reporting the threats to be a hoax and steps were being taken to reopen public access to downtown streets and also to reassure concerned citizens that all was well.

There was a time, of course, when such threats would not even have been reported, far less taken seriously by the authorities.

But Trinidad and Tobago has had its 9/11 experience, coming as it did a full decade before terrorists unleashed their own destruction and mayhem in the United States.

We have had our Parliament invaded by armed fanatics, we have had a Prime Minister brutalised, shot and humiliated along with other Members of Parliament and journalists working with State-owned TTT.

Nor has there ever been a justiciable solution to the gross excesses of July 27, 1990. The perpetrators were allowed to walk free because of a purely legal technicality -and we have since had to live with the knowledge that there are men who share a fundamentalist ideology, and are capable of resorting to murderous violence, living within our midst.

It says volumes for our much vaunted tolerance levels and our respect for the rule of law that this state of affairs has remained as is for the past 14 years, albeit with occasional outbursts of fresh threats from this particular group or its varied offspring.

The fact, however, that those threats have all proven to be so much bluster is no reason for us, and for the national security authorities, to relax our vigilance or, worse, assume that the threat is no longer there and we can therefore blissfully carry on regardless.

A number of commentators on the fundamentalist threat, including members of the Muslim community, have repeatedly warned that Trinidad and Tobago is a very likely target in the continuing war against terrorism.

For certain, our close economic and political ties with the United States raises our profile as a potential terrorist flashpoint.

The fact, too, that we generally tend to be somewhat lackadaisical about threats of this nature also is worrisome. People who are persuaded that terrorism is their only option, whatever the political cause, are naturally encouraged by the classic laid-back posture that characterises our way of life.

We hope the authorities are not only willing to take special measures to cope with the threat of terrorism from time to time but are also prepared for the likelihood that terrorism will, at some point in time, cause serious disruption in this country.

The better prepared we are, the better will we be able to prevent and perhaps even withstand the onslaughts of fanatics and others who have little regard for life-or, indeed, for our way of life.