When the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives re­sumed yes­ter­day’s post-2025 bud­get de­bate break, it was on new foot­ing fol­low­ing the lat­est de­vel­op­ments in and out of both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion.

New op­po­si­tion queries and gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion on Par­lia­ment’s agen­da were over­hung by the per­cep­tion of PNM’s in­ter­nal is­sues, plus its clus­ter chal­lenge of the lat­est ex­ter­nal is­sues from fi­nan­cial to in­dus­tri­al and le­gal.

If the Op­po­si­tion UNC was labour­ing un­der the neg­a­tive spot­light since March re­gard­ing in­ter­nal is­sues with its five es­tranged MPs—Rush­ton Paray, Rod­ney Charles, Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, and Rai Rag­bir—that’s now shared with PNM’s per­ceived mat­ters with post­poned con­ven­tion/in­ter­nal elec­tions, lead­er­ship ques­tions, and up­com­ing screen­ing for 15 PNM-held con­stituen­cies.

Con­se­quent­ly, UNC pi­cong and grins were ex­pect­ed in Par­lia­ment re­gard­ing PNM MP/gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings on the par­ty is­sues and em­bat­tled Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds fac­ing com­pe­ti­tion for his Laven­tille West seat from at­tor­ney Ka­reem Mar­celle. “He who laughs last, laughs best,” re­marked UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh.

Af­ter PNM’s heat­ed Oc­to­ber 19 gen­er­al coun­cil that marred its pro­file, at least one GC mem­ber was cu­ri­ous why no GC was called for this month yet. Both par­ties, how­ev­er, are acute­ly aware that di­vi­sion could mean the dif­fer­ence be­tween po­lit­i­cal life and death in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion—and it’s left to un­fold who on each side is op­er­at­ing on self or na­tion­al in­ter­est. Or pro­mot­ing the for­mer pur­port­ed­ly to “en­sure” the lat­ter. Sim­i­lar ques­tions al­ready loomed with the Ju­di­cia­ry’s warn­ing re­gard­ing some TTPS of­fi­cers and the ex­clu­sion of arms at courts. Two en­ti­ties nec­es­sary for T&T’s de­fence, at odds with each oth­er, could hard­ly win pub­lic con­fi­dence or con­trol in their at­tack on crime. Pub­lic con­fi­dence re­gard­ing unit­ed ranks is there­fore a key elec­tion re­quire­ment for both UNC and PNM.

Re­cent test­ing (in PNM ) and po­lit­i­cal pot-stir­ring (by UNC) with elec­tion date spec­u­la­tion—re­gard­ing polls af­ter Eid and Car­ni­val in March—have caused some on ei­ther side to give up: “I just prepar­ing, yes … Sep­tem­ber, No­vem­ber, when­ev­er.”

While PNM can fa­cil­i­tate long cam­paign­ing for its 19 prospec­tives in UNC seats, the De­cem­ber 2 screen­ing of nom­i­nees for the ma­jor­i­ty of PNM’s con­stituen­cies may sig­nal that most of the screen­ing work will soon be done. It’s ahead whether most in­cum­bents who were nom­i­nat­ed un­op­posed means the team may be large­ly un­changed in those ar­eas. The es­ti­mat­ed half-hour for screen­ing each of the six batch­es of ar­eas will like­ly over­flow with can­di­dates’ de­liv­er­ies, con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives’ views, and screen­ing team in­ter­ro­ga­tion on the good, bad, and ug­ly of nom­i­nees’ re­spec­tive tenures in Gov­ern­ment and con­stituen­cy.

Tu­na­puna, To­co/San­gre Grande, and San Fer­nan­do West will have to ac­count for UNC’s ex­pan­sion in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls. In­cum­bents’ man­age­ment and le­gal is­sues ac­crued/de­fend­ed may be con­sid­ered, in­clud­ing is­sues like Cum­ming’s chal­lenge to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on the Spe­cial Branch mat­ter ex­pect­ed in court in ear­ly 2025. While UNC seeks to ex­ploit the PNM “di­vi­sion”, the gov­ern­ment has grounds for the same with UNC’s Paray Five con­cern­ing To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills, cur­rent­ly To­ba­go par­ties’ con­ver­sa­tion.

In the fi­nal stages, the bills re­quire a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote and op­po­si­tion sup­port for pas­sage, re­gard­ing which the Gov­ern­ment will ob­vi­ous­ly pitch to the Five, who’ve made clear their po­si­tion on na­tion­al is­sues. UNC’s Par­lia­ment re­turn yes­ter­day was cloud­ed by con­cerns from three of those MPs chal­leng­ing their leader on screen­ing and lead­er­ship “se­lec­tion”; the lat­ter a sim­i­lar is­sue in PNM.

UNC’s con­sul­ta­tions in mar­gin­als are pre­sent­ing new faces—Dr Michael Dowlat and Shi­va Bal­li­ram in San Fer­nan­do West. More is ex­pect­ed ahead, test­ing peo­ple and re­ac­tions pub­licly. Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s swipe at third par­ties/PNM on the lack of ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions again telegraphed UNC’s Re­pub­li­can-type fo­cus for a coali­tion of “in­ter­ests” (peo­ple) rather than par­ties.

Amid Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s con­tro­ver­sial loy­al­ist se­lec­tions—sim­i­lar to UNC’s cur­rent struc­ture—Sec­re­tary of State-des­ig­nate Mar­co Ru­bio’s hard­line against Venezuela’s Nico­las Maduro and the huge sea change Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce, the UNC hasn’t said if, as a gov­ern­ment, it’ll fight for T&T’s Drag­on gas. With Trump and Maduro be­ing sworn in Jan­u­ary, what aris­es there­after in the US’s next 100 days looms for elec­tion-bound T&T, where loy­al­ty—the out­come of which is be­ing seen in the US—is key.