Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Oil slicks, sex flicks, mur­der con­spir­a­cies and dis­ease dom­i­nat­ed the head­lines for 2014, lay­ing the ta­pes­try for a new year, in which gen­er­al elec­tions will take cen­tre stage.The Life­s­port scan­dal, Pris­ongate and the de­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal African im­mi­grants were among the ma­jor is­sues af­fect­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.

Among those who were forced to quit the PP's Cab­i­net be­cause of al­leged scan­dals were Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, who was fired for al­leged­ly as­sault­ing an air host­ess; Tourism Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma who re­signed over a pub­lic spat with his ex-girl­friend Sascha Singh; and the Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts who re­signed fol­low­ing an au­dit re­port on the Life­S­port pro­gramme, which found wide­spread cor­rup­tion.

The Ebo­la, dengue and chikun­gun­ya virus­es al­so caused ma­jor pan­ic this year.

Not even Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona and his wife Reema Car­mona were spared the con­tro­ver­sy which en­com­passed politi­cians, re­li­gious lead­ers and me­dia per­son­al­i­ties alike.Among the con­tro­ver­sies which trig­gered a firestorm of crit­i­cisms was the tabling of the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014 which was passed af­ter al­most three days of heat­ed de­bate with­out sup­port from the PNM.

The long-await­ed Dog Con­trol Act 2014 and the pas­sage of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Bill 2014 were among the sig­nif­i­cant leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sions which Gov­ern­ment of­fered this year. The po­lit­i­cal in­fight­ing be­tween for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and his suc­ces­sor Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so stirred rum­blings with­in the PNM.

Spi­ralling mur­der sta­tis­tics con­tin­ued to be a hot top­ic over the past 12 months with Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith com­plain­ing that many of his crime ini­tia­tives were be­ing stymied by bu­reau­crat­ic red tape with­in his own min­istry.

Oil slicks

The year 2014 start­ed with oil slicks and end­ed with con­cerns over tum­bling oil prices.

Last Jan­u­ary, state agen­cies em­barked on a mas­sive clean-up dri­ve to clear coastal wa­ters of 7,000 bar­rels of crude oil which spilled from sep­a­rate lo­ca­tions in the lead-up to Christ­mas. Petrotrin used the con­tro­ver­sial dis­per­sant Corex­it 9500 to con­trol the spill. The use of this sub­stance, which sci­en­tists have said was far more tox­ic than oil alone, was con­demned by en­vi­ron­men­tal groups and the trade union rep­re­sent­ing oil work­ers.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, which fined Petrotrin $20 mil­lion, is­sued a state­ment on Jan­u­ary 17 say­ing there were four spills which had an im­pact on 12 lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing 10.5 miles of beach.By Feb­ru­ary, six se­nior em­ploy­ees from Petrotrin in­clud­ing vice pres­i­dent of Petrotrin's re­fin­ery and mar­ket­ing de­part­ment Mad­hu Bachan were fired in con­nec­tion with the oil spill. De­spite as­ser­tions of sab­o­tage and sub­se­quent in­ves­ti­ga­tions, the oil spills con­tin­ued.

On Ju­ly 9, 5,000 bar­rels of slop oil seeped in­to the near­by Guaracara Riv­er, caus­ing dozens of res­i­dents to fall ill. The oil spill oc­curred when a leak mys­te­ri­ous­ly de­vel­oped at the en­er­gy com­pa­ny's Tank MP6. The Mara­bel­la res­i­dents were giv­en com­pen­sa­tion but many of them con­tin­ued to stage spo­radic protests in Au­gust, Sep­tem­ber and No­vem­ber.

In Pe­nal, on Ju­ly 27, sev­er­al res­i­dents of Dig­i­ty Trace, Pe­nal, were evac­u­at­ed from their homes as an­oth­er oil spill oc­curred. This time, Petrotrin said a two-inch union on the well head had part­ed, caus­ing oil to spew on­to res­i­dents' roof tops.

On No­vem­ber 22, an­oth­er act of sab­o­tage was re­port­ed when bull plugs from a tank were re­moved caus­ing five bar­rels of oil to seep in­to a riv­er at Grand Ravine, Pa­lo Seco. This hap­pened a day af­ter a group call­ing it­self Anony­mous T&T re­leased a video on YouTube call­ing on Petrotrin to "come clean" on is­sues sur­round­ing the oil spill at Mara­bel­la. The video, which fea­tured a per­son dressed in black wear­ing a Guy Fawkes mask, was lat­er tak­en down from YouTube.

Apart from dam­age to oil in­fra­struc­ture, sab­o­tage has al­so been re­port­ed this year at the OAS Con­struc­tura high­way site. On De­cem­ber 7, masked sabo­teurs set fire to a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar crane at the OAS high­way job site in Point Fortin, as a warn­ing to the Gov­ern­ment. The cut­lass-wield­ing as­sailants or­dered the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nid­co) to "pay farm­ers now or face the con­se­quences."

The world al­so wit­nessed a steady de­cline in oil prices be­tween June and De­cem­ber. On Sep­tem­ber 8, dur­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Howai said there was a rev­enue pre­dic­tion of $60.351 bil­lion for the fis­cal year 2014-2015. This rev­enue was based on an ex­pect­ed oil price of US$80/bbl (WTI) and a nat­ur­al gas price of US$2.75/MMB­tu (NYMEX).

Oil prices plum­met­ed to be­low US$60 as the year came to a close. In late Oc­to­ber, Cab­i­net met in an emer­gency ses­sion to dis­cuss the is­sue and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai or­dered all min­istries to cur­tail their ex­pen­di­ture. Busi­ness and en­er­gy cham­bers through­out the coun­try lat­er called on Gov­ern­ment to re­vise the bud­get.

But there was no slow-down of gov­ern­ment mega projects in­clud­ing the Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies law cam­pus in Debe, the Point Fortin hos­pi­tal, Cou­va Aquat­ic Cen­tre and sev­er­al high­way in­ter­changes.

In No­vem­ber, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the on­ly project which might be af­fect­ed by the cur­tail­ing of ex­pen­di­ture was the com­ple­tion of the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um at Tarou­ba. A fur­ther $200 mil­lion is need­ed to com­plete in­fra­struc­tur­al works on the sta­di­um.By De­cem­ber, Gov­ern­ment promised to curb spend­ing but was pub­licly crit­i­cised for wast­ing mon­ey on bill­boards bear­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's im­age.

Sex flicks

Sev­er­al Cab­i­net min­is­ters made news this year over al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct. In March, Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) flight at­ten­dant Ronelle Laid­low, 25, filed a com­plaint that Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh touched her breast when he reached for her iden­ti­fi­ca­tion badge, which was pinned to her blouse, and threat­ened to have her fired.

Po­lice lat­er con­firmed they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing a re­port of dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour by Ra­mad­hars­ingh on board a do­mes­tic flight from To­ba­go to Trinidad on March 16.

On April 5, sin­gle moth­er Pa­tri­cia Singh al­so made a re­port to po­lice that she was made to per­form sex acts on Ra­mad­hars­ingh when she went to him for as­sis­tance to fast-track a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) ap­pli­ca­tion. Ra­mad­hars­ingh was lat­er fired by the Prime Min­is­ter who or­dered that his ap­point­ment be re­voked on March 24.

A week af­ter this scan­dal, Tourism Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma's al­leged af­fair with busi­ness­woman Sascha Singh al­so went vi­ral. Singh, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of AMS Biotech Se­cu­ri­ty Con­cept and Am­Sure T&T Ltd, who claimed to be Shar­ma's ex-girl­friend, re­port­ed to of­fi­cers of the St Joseph po­lice sta­tion that he used vi­o­lence against her.

Singh, 30, al­leged that Shar­ma, 54, hit her and pushed her down at the Grand Bazaar mall on March 12. He lat­er ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion. The DPP lat­er found in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to charge Shar­ma for any of­fence.

Sports Min­is­ter Anil Roberts al­so re­signed mid-year. He start­ed off the new year on a high note af­ter ty­ing the knot with his 21-year-old fi­ance Shan­dell Nichols, but took a dra­mat­ic slide in Ju­ly when he ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion af­ter an au­dit in­to Life­s­port showed mas­sive cor­rup­tion.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai blew the whis­tle on Roberts, say­ing it was he who re­tained Adol­phus Daniell, the ed­u­ca­tor who was paid $34 mil­lion from the Life­S­port pro­gramme for no work.

Life­s­port was meant to wean young peo­ple away from a life of crime, but the au­dit re­vealed the pro­gramme had been rid­dled with fi­nan­cial ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties; em­ployed co-or­di­na­tors with crim­i­nal back­grounds; gave ev­i­dence of mas­sive fraud and mil­lions mis­spent; ghost cen­tres; ghost par­tic­i­pants; im­prop­er pro­cure­ment; and theft, among oth­er the find­ings.

In May, an ex­plo­sive video shot in­side a ho­tel room al­so went vi­ral. It showed a man re­sem­bling a min­is­ter rolling what ap­peared to be a mar­i­jua­na joint. The man, lat­er dubbed as "the two pull min­is­ter" was in the com­pa­ny of Span­ish-speak­ing women. The PNM lat­er ad­mit­ted to know­ing about the video sev­er­al months be­fore it went pub­lic.

And in No­vem­ber, an­oth­er on­line video sur­faced de­pict­ing a sex tape fea­tur­ing ra­dio DJ Ke­vaughn "Ler­bz" Sa­vory and a woman pur­port­ed to be the wife of a for­mer min­is­ter. Po­lice said a hit was placed on Sa­vory, fol­low­ing which six peo­ple were held in a plot to kill Sa­vory.

Ex-Life­S­port co-or­di­na­tor Ra­jaiee Ali; Kesh�orn Demp­ster; Brent La Croix; Bran­don Bor�neo; his wife, Don­na Dy­er; and his broth­er, Ish�mael were charged with be­ing mem­bers of an un­named gang, con�spir­ing to mur­der Sa­vory and with as­sist­ing a gang mem­ber in the com­mis­sion of a gang-re­lat­ed act by pos­sess­ing a gun and am­mu­ni­tion.

Ebo­la, dengue and ChikV

T&T was spared any out­break of Ebo­la in 2014, even though health care work­ers had two "scares" at Mt Hope and Pi­ar­co in Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber. It was a time when the rest of the world be­came en­grossed in the spread of the dis­ease which has killed over 7,000 peo­ple, pre­dom­i­nant­ly in West Africa, since 1976.

In Au­gust, the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) de­clared West Africa's Ebo­la out­break a "pub­lic health event of in­ter­na­tion­al con­cern." The Unit­ed States record­ed its first case of Ebo­la with the death of Er­ic Dun­can. As PA­HO sound­ed its alert, Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan begged cit­i­zens not to pan­ic over Ebo­la say­ing Gov­ern­ment would set up iso­la­tion cen­tres in Pi­ar­co and Cau­ra if any cas­es were di­ag­nosed.

In No­vem­ber, the me­dia was giv­en a tour of the new con­tain­ment fa­cil­i­ties at Cau­ra, in­clu­sive of US$20,000 haz­mat suits and two-bed iso­la­tion units.

But while T&T was spared Ebo­la, the cas­es of ChikV and dengue soared. As re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions con­tin­ued clean­ing and dy­na-fog­ging, Pro­fes­sor Dave Chadee, a world ex­pert on vec­tor-borne dis­eases, said the strate­gies be­ing used to fight the virus­es were out­dat­ed.

In Sep­tem­ber, PA­HO de­clared that ChikV had in­fect­ed more than one mil­lion peo­ple through­out the Amer­i­c­as in 2014. How­ev­er, Mar­cos Es­pinal, di­rec­tor of PA­HO's De­part­ment of Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases and Health Analy­sis, said the fa­tal­i­ty rate for dengue in the Amer­i­c­as had de­clined more than 28 per cent in the last three years.

Mur­der and con­spir­a­cy

Apart from the threats of dis­ease, T&T al­so faced its fair share of mur­der and may­hem for 2014, with the mur­der toll climb­ing past 400.

Sev­er­al high-pro­file mur­ders re­mained on the minds of cit­i­zens. Among these were the May 4 mur­der of state pros­e­cu­tor and in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Dana See­ta­hal, SC, who was am­bushed short­ly af­ter mid­night along Hamil­ton Hold­er Street, Wood­brook, as she made her way to her One Wood­brook Place apart­ment. A $3.5 mil­lion re­ward was lat­er of­fered by Crime Stop­pers, but no one has yet been charged for the crime.

In Au­gust 22, the man David "Ju­nior" Bak­er, 28, be­lieved to have shot See­ta­hal sev­er­al times, was killed by po­lice at a house in Freeport.

In Oc­to­ber, the dis­ap­pear­ance of a Bras­so Seco fam­i­ly–Ir­ma Ram­per­sad, 49; her daugh­ters Fe­li­cia, 17, and Jen­nelle Gon­za­les, 19; and Jen­nelle's daugh­ter 14-month-old Sha­nia Amoroso–led to the cap­ture of T&T's most want­ed fugi­tive Az­mon Alexan­der, who had es­caped from the Ma­yaro Mag­is­trates Court on Jan­u­ary 31 af­ter ap­pear­ing on kid­nap­ping and rob­bery charges.

Alexan­der and his 17-year-old ac­com­plice were charged with the mur­ders of Fe­lix Mar­tinez, 52, Ram­per­sad and ba­by Sha­nia. They were al­so charged with gun and am­mu­ni­tion of­fences, false im­pris­on­ment, shoot­ing at the po­lice, bur­glary, rob­bery and oth­er se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fences.

On No­vem­ber 22, the mur­ders of Ger­man cou­ple Hu­ber­tus Keil, 74, and Bir­gid Keil, 71, al­so made glob­al head­lines, threat­en­ing the tourism in­dus­try in To­ba­go. Their bod­ies were found on Min­is­ter's Bay, near the mouth of the riv­er at Ba­co­let Bay. There were mul­ti­ple chop wounds about the necks, hands and bod­ies of the cou­ple.

Be­cause of the high crime rate, sev­er­al bul­letins have been is­sued in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, warn­ing about the se­ri­ous crime rate. On De­cem­ber 4, the Unit­ed King­dom is­sued a warn­ing to the 30,000 British na­tion­als who vis­it T&T every year. The bul­letin warned of high lev­els of vi­o­lent crime, es­pe­cial­ly in the in­ner city neigh­bour­hoods east of Port-of-Spain's city cen­tre, Laven­tille, Mor­vant and Barataria.

Po­lice killings

Sev­er­al po­lice killings were al­so re­port­ed for 2014 which prompt­ed wide­spread protests. In June, of­fi­cers from the In­ter-Agency Task Force re­spond­ed to a re­port about gun­fire oc­cur­ring in Mor­vant, and shot two boys dead–cousins 16-year-old Ha­keem Alexan­der and 15-year-old Tevin Alexan­der. Tevin's moth­er, Lisa De Leon-Alexan­der, said the boys were run­ning away from a gun­man and­stopped when they saw the po­lice, but were still shot. This prompt­ed wide­spread protests.

On Au­gust 14, Beres­ford Asoon, a known car thief from San­gre Grande, and an­oth­er man were killed by po­lice in Cen­tral Trinidad. On Sep­tem­ber 17, St Barbs res­i­dents, en­raged at the killing of their neigh­bour Ker­ron Welling­ton by po­lice, set the streets on fire.

On Sep­tem­ber 2, di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) Gillian Lucky re­signed in prepa­ra­tion for her ap­point­ment as a High Court Judge. Fol­low­ing her de­par­ture sev­er­al res­i­dents of Laven­tille lament­ed that there would no longer be fair in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to po­lice killings.

Pres­i­dent's predica­ment

Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona found him­self in hot wa­ter this year as he tried to de­fend his wife, Reema Car­mona, whose at­tire was crit­i­cised by come­di­enne and ra­dio talk show host Rachel Price.

On Oc­to­ber 21, it was an­nounced via a news broad­cast on CNC3 that Car­mona is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to Price to cease com­ments on his wife. Price's com­ments stemmed from what many con­sid­ered the in­ap­pro­pri­ate at­tire of Mrs Car­mona when she at­tend­ed a Unit­ed Na­tions fash­ion event for first ladies in New York.

Price lashed back say­ing free­dom of the press was un­der at­tack. How­ev­er, Car­mona said, the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of free­dom of ex­pres­sion was not a li­cence to de­fame. To date, Price claims, she has nev­er re­ceived the let­ter.

In No­vem­ber, the Pres­i­dent was hit with an­oth­er scan­dal when it was re­vealed that he had been re­ceiv­ing a $28,000 month­ly hous­ing al­lowance since last year while oc­cu­py­ing state-owned quar­ters at Flagstaff Hill, St James.Car­mona and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, Stephanie Lewis, who ap­proved the pay­ment were crit­i­cised by the Op­po­si­tion and the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP). Calls were al­so made for Gov­ern­ment to halt the pay­ment and for Car­mona to re­fund the mon­ey.

Key leg­isla­tive re­forms

Apart from the mur­der and may­hem, cor­rup­tion was a hot top­ic for 2014. Sev­er­al key pieces of leg­is­la­tion meant to re­duce crime, cor­rup­tion and im­prop­er pro­cure­ment prac­tices were passed.

The most con­tro­ver­sial bill for the year was the Con­sti­tu­tion (Amend­ment) Bill 2014, which sparked protests and vig­ils out­side the Par­lia­ment in Au­gust. The con­tro­ver­sy be­gan when Dr Mer­le Hodge, a mem­ber of the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mit­tee, raised con­cerns about the run-off pro­pos­al. Hodge said the run-off was nev­er part of the com­mit­tee's re­port and was an "an­ti-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic con­tra­dic­tion of the prin­ci­ple of pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion."

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said Hodge could have sub­mit­ted a mi­nor­i­ty re­port if she had con­cerns about the Bill which con­tained pro­vi­sions for a two-term lim­it for a Prime Min­is­ter, the right to re­call and a sec­ond bal­lot run-off.In late Au­gust, af­ter three days of in­tense de­bate, the bill was passed. Twen­ty-three mem­bers vot­ed for the bill, 14 against, and there was one ab­sten­tion.

An­oth­er Bill which trig­gered de­bate was the Dog Con­trol Act which be­came law on June 2. Even though the act was passed, dog own­ers were not hap­py with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the leg­is­la­tion. Own­ers of Class A (dan­ger­ous) dogs ex­pressed con­cerns over the hefty $250,000 in­sur­ance that each own­er of a Class A dog was re­quired to have in the event that their pet at­tacked some­one.

By De­cem­ber, sev­er­al an­i­mal rights ac­tivists com­plained that re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions still had not set up an­i­mal pounds and prop­er fa­cil­i­ties for track­ing an­i­mals. The long-await­ed re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the 1990 coup at­tempt was laid in Par­lia­ment in March. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in dis­clos­ing some of the rec­om­men­da­tions, said that some of the com­mis­sion's find­ings would be taught in schools as his­to­ry for the ben­e­fit of young peo­ple.

In De­cem­ber, the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Bill 2014 was al­so passed in Par­lia­ment. It had tak­en ten years for the bill to be passed by a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty. Chair­man of the pri­vate pec­tor Civ­il So­ci­ety Group on Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment, Win­ston Ri­ley, wel­comed the pas­sage of the bill.The year end­ed with the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounc­ing that the Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment (Cap­i­tal Of­fences) Bill 2011 would be brought back to Par­lia­ment next year as a de­ter­rent to crime.