It was just a really bad week for Jack. Ewatski, that is. The former Winnipeg police commissioner found out Trini-style that nothing makes noise like competing suppliers, competing politicians and the glancing chance of bobol. And while the country debated the technical details of Jack's aircraft, his conduct is proof of bureaucratic fragmentation in the fight against the crime and social decay generated by the last 20 years of PNM and UNC politics.

Once the PM and National Security Minister believed themselves to be a safe distance from Jack's aircraft, both lapped up Donna Cox's revelations on Jack's embryonic flying squad. But then Cox went one step further and used Jack's bad idea to justify an even worse one: the PNM blimp. And just like every other time in the past 20 years of PNM versus UNC politics, Cox ignored the fact that the country finds itself dealing with insurmountable crime and social decay made worse by the PNM's failure to deal with the root causes between 2002 and 2010 and before that.

Of course heightened crime and corruption were reasons the PNM was booted out in 2010, and the People's Partnership put in. But the replacement of the PNM by the People's Partnership does not reduce the complicity of the PNM in the crisis either created or perpetuated during the party's periods in Government. Even as Cox and other PNM MPs and supporters go about their jobs of criticising the People's Partnership Government, they could also drop the sanctimonious attitude which got the country into the deep end in the first place. If the People's Partnership failure to do any better than the PNM upsets the country, then the PNM's refusal to acknowledge its horrible performance on crime is aggravating. And this is why Ewatski's flying squad revelation has led us to see the greatest danger to the country on this crime issue. The country witnesses the continued absence of cohesion, coherence and strategy in fighting crime after 20 years of UNC and PNM political extempore. To start with Cox, Ewatski and Gibbs have inadvertently exposed the country to the reality that either there is no anti-crime plan or if there is one, the leadership of the Police Service is not aware of it.

The Ministry of National Security has said that the ministry should have been told of the police aircraft plans, because the ministry may itself be working on a similar arrangement. The question is if the ministry's plans for national security are not informed in a large measure by the leadership of the police service, then who is providing the vision, expertise and strategy to the ministry?

Is it the AG, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Legal Affairs, the Police Complaints Authority, the Police Service Commission, the Selwyn Ryan Committee, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the National Security Council, the National Security Adviser, the gang leaders or the big fish? If there is an anti-crime plan and Gibbs and Ewatski are not part of it, then it confirms that between a series of ministers and advisers, bureaucrats and technocrats, a failed State of Emergency and an alleged assassination plot, national security is fragmented, disconnected, inconsistent and uncertain.

And divided amongst too many bureaucrats and politicians, no anti-crime plan can emerge amidst a perpetual political kowtow to drug lords, crime bosses and political financiers.

The PNM government in which Cox was the Minister in the Ministry of National Security was fully aware of the heavy crime in the country. In a previous column I pointed out that when the PNM replaced the UNC in Government in 2002, the party continued the UNC's optimism, promises, spending and rhetoric. And as the spending increased on national security and social programmes, the killing and brutality also increased. Murders doubled in three years from 2000 to 2003 when the PNM introduced the first of its political funds to fight crime and in 2003 the PNM Government spent $2,649.9 million, approximately 13.2 per cent of the national budget, on social programmes.

In a previous column I also pointed out that the country is now spending over $13 million a day on national security and maybe just as much on social programmes. After more than a decade of heavy spending under both the PNM and the UNC, one out of every five dollars earned by the country goes into the fight against crime and social decay, with very little to show.

And MP Cox's sanctimonious attitude is not new. Eight months into the People's Partnership current turn in government, Cox's high regard for the PNM approach to crime-fighting was evident when she made her contribution to the January 2011 debate on the Firearms Amendment Bill. Cox urged the People's Partnership Government to "continue many of the PNM government programmes that started under our administration, not only in the Ministry of National Security but in many other ministries". Cox also lamented the fact that even after the People's Partnership eight months in office "we keep hearing that there is a reduction in crime, but we are not seeing it. We are tired of the talk, also. We want to see results."

If ever a head had been buried someplace, it was Donna Cox's: the PNM had been in office for the eight years preceding the People's Partnership eight months.

What the latest national security debate tells us is that on one hand Jack Ewatski's conduct points to bureaucratic fragmentation which hinders progress on an anti-crime plan. But on the other hand it also reminds us that for 20 years we have played political musical chairs with the PNM and UNC and inevitably the politicians on both sides will eventually sound like Cox. Donna, that is.

* Clarence Rambharat is a lawyer and university lecturer