Democratic National Alliance (DNA) Leader, Branville McCartney described the government’s crime forum, held last evening, as “nonsense” and said it is further proof that they don’t know what they’re doing.

Mr. McCartney questioned the government’s motives because it campaigned so heavily on crime in the run-up to the 2012 General Elections.

“We are having a forum and this same minister was in charge of a Crime Select Committee that I was part of,” he said.

“We interviewed everybody and when I was in the House of Assembly I said this is another waste of time. That same minister [National Security Minister, Dr. Bernard Nottage], who is having this forum, was in charge of the Crime Select Committee. I said at the time that nothing would come out of it and nothing did.”

Mr. McCartney said the talk about crime needs to cease and more action needs to be taken.

“We have a crime problem,” he said.

“We have all the reports and suggestions. After the meeting what will happen? I find it amazing because we have a government that campaigned on crime and went around saying they had the answers. We have a government where their first political commercial was on crime. They went about posting all sorts of billboards, quite frankly embarrassing our country internationally talking about how bad the crime is and to date they have done nothing.”

As a result, the DNA leader believes the symposium held by the government means that they do not know what they are doing.

Mr. McCartney did, however, offer some solutions.

“Crime is multi-faceted but we need to deal with the small issues. No matter how small the crime, people will have in their minds that consequences will follow. We understand that when we go to the United States we have to buckle up. We don’t even carry [beer] bottles in our cars. We know the offenses and we know if we get [caught we’ll get in trouble],” he said.

He also said he would “definitely” enforce capital punishment as well.

“I’ll pull the lever and do so right away,” Mr. McCartney explained.

“I would deal with the international community otherwise. They don’t know what’s going on in our country where there are people mutilating young boys. There are rapes and people getting stabbed everyday. Whatever the government needs, I’ll find the money to support it.”

The DNA leader said he is more than willing to assist the government curb the crime levels but noted that “it can’t be business as usual.”