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San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris says sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments to pub­lic or­der can be achieved with­out lan­guage he be­lieves di­min­ish­es the coun­try, as de­bate con­tin­ues over how lo­cal au­thor­i­ties should ad­dress in­dis­ci­pline and en­force­ment.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Par­ris wel­comed what he de­scribed as a more an­a­lyt­i­cal ap­proach tak­en by Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed in ad­dress­ing shared chal­lenges such as il­le­gal vend­ing, over­grown pri­vate lots and pub­lic nui­sances—is­sues he said San Fer­nan­do con­fronts dai­ly. How­ev­er, Par­ris stressed that mod­ern lead­er­ship re­quires more than iden­ti­fy­ing prob­lems, call­ing in­stead for struc­tured analy­sis, prac­ti­cal re­spons­es and guid­ed im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Where he dif­fered, Par­ris said, was with re­marks en­dors­ing the de­scrip­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go as a “law­less dump,” lan­guage re­cent­ly used by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and sup­port­ed by Mo­hammed.