PORT-OF-SPAIN, (Reuters):Energy riches have vaulted Trinidad and Tobago up the economic rankings, making it a rare Caribbean country that does not depend on tourism, but the good times are being soured by a surge in murders and gun violence.
Not far from gleaming shopping malls and towering cranes that testify to a sizzling economy, rough parts of the capital Port-of-Spain are home to gangs with names like 'G-Unit' and the 'Crock' gang which are thriving on an influx of South American cocaine and cheap guns.
A tripling of murders in five years and a rash of kidnappings has strained the twin-island state's ethnic relations and prompted some to propose radical solutions.
Continued debate
"There is a criminal insurgency in this country. Too much democracy corrupts!" shouted a man in historic Woodford Square across from the country's parliament as he argued with friends.
In a debate that is echoed daily in newspapers, the 44-year-old contractor with dreadlocks and a graying beard said the government should adopt a zero-tolerance approach, shooting suspects on sight if necessary.
Another man urges restraint, worried that such measures could send the country down the path familiar to South America of death squads linked to security forces - something that may have already begun, according to some government critics.
The country's infrastructure is visibly creaking under the strain of economic growth expected to top 12 per cent this year, driven by an influx of foreign money chasing its rich natural gas and oil resources.
Congestion has turned what was once a 30-minute drive to the airport into a two-hour slog during rush hour. The government has been liberally spending its energy earnings, contributing to a red-hot real estate market and inflation that late last year broke through 10 per cent.
"I think we're doing too much too fast," said Gregory McGuire, an economics professor at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. "We're seeing the negative effects both on the (energy) industry and the economy."
But it is crime that has prompted most national angst and nostalgia for the old days of slow growth and low violence. There were just under 400 murders in each of the past two years - about the same number as in the state of New Jersey in the United States whose population is nearly seven times bigger.
Police and government officials say gangs have expanded due to Trinidad's growing status as a transshipment point for South American cocaine, even as unemployment has hit record lows.
Recent weeks have seen a disturbing new trend with several police shootings of suspects.
The kidnapping in December of a prominent businesswomen has also galvanised discontent over the government's failure to cut crime despite millions of dollars spent on improving police methods, including recruiting 39 British officers.
Racial politics
But with elections due by next January and the country's politics still divided along racial lines, solutions to the crime surge have swiftly become bogged down in old rivalries.
The kidnapped businesswoman, Vindra Naipaul-Coolman, was part of the ethnic Indian community, that slightly outnumbers ethnic African, which says it is bearing the brunt of crime. About three quarters of kidnapping victims have been Indians.
"The East Indian business community is under attack in this country. The statistics are there for all to see," said businessman Rampersad Seuraj.
Relations between Indians and ethnic African descendants of slaves are generally smooth, as shown by the multicoloured Carnival that takes over the islands for weeks every year.
Politics is different. Old rivals from the early post-independence days still lead the African-dominated ruling People's National Movement and the Indian-dominated opposition United National Congress.
The UNC, which has six former cabinet members facing criminal charges for financial wrongdoing, has fiercely attacked the govern-ment over crime. Yet bad blood between the parties has held up much-needed reforms of the police and criminal justice system.
