The country was last week reminded of yet another endlessly dragging investigation, when Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine described efforts to get to the bottom of a diesel racket uncovered four months ago as simply "ongoing".

Bunkers packed with illegal diesel and ships converted to transport fuel were among scandals memorably coming to light as security crackdowns expanded under the emergency. That nothing has since come of it—that is to say, nobody has been charged—amounts to near-scandal today. His assurances of tighter monitoring and control of transactions subject to the fuel subsidy are worth noting for possible prevention of future racketeering. But certainly it is suitable punishment of past rip-offs of the Treasury that will count as the greater deterrent. For this to happen, however, investigations must show progress, and outstanding questions about scrap metal dealing and, indeed, drug smuggling inside chicken containers, must find actionable answers.

In the absence of bringing such matters to successful conclusion, the Government runs the risk of being viewed by an increasingly cynical public as an administration that is full of sound and fury, signalling nothing.

Add to these the Colombian gang that seemed to evaporate into thin air, the assassination plot that might never have been, the nagging and lagging delays in the prosecution for alleged wrongdoing at UDeCOTT and CL Financial and the lack of outcomes to the multiple declarations of audits into everything from the Tarouba Stadium to the Sport Company of Trinidad and Tobago and one gets a powerful sense of the level of paralysis in the country's investigatory capacity.

It is being repeatedly suggested that expectations are unfairly high on the Persad-Bissessar administration. Need we remind the leaders of the People's Partnership that they were the ones to offer themselves for office as the political option with ready solutions to the country's very many problems, particularly corruption and crime.