Amid T&T’s cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE) and as­sort­ed shock rea­sons which con­tin­ue to be un­veiled, to­mor­row’s 35th an­niver­sary of the Ju­ly 27, 1990 coup at­tempt and that SoE, will shine a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong spot­light on T&T’s grim se­cu­ri­ty dilem­ma.

This coun­try has moved across the years from the un­der­cur­rent of in­sur­gent threat and un­fet­tered arms ac­cess, to rash­es of kid­nap­pings, record mur­der highs and the killings of spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors Dana See­ta­hal and Ran­dall Hec­tor, to the re­cent out­ing of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal syn­di­cate op­er­a­tions and planned at­tacks on cer­tain se­cu­ri­ty and jus­tice sec­tors.

Plus: the depth in T&T of Venezuela’s no­to­ri­ous Tren de Aragua (TdA) transna­tion­al crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion, plac­ing T&T along­side the US, whose poli­cies seek TdA erad­i­ca­tion there.

Fol­low­ing De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge’s frank dis­clo­sures about TdA en­trench­ment here and prison is­sues, threat erad­i­ca­tion boasts from Gov­ern­ment will have to with­stand scruti­ny against the per­cep­tion that T&T’s moved (fur­ther) in the di­rec­tion of Mex­i­co and Colom­bia.

Com­par­isons haven’t been lost. Venezuela’s To­coron prison, where TdA orig­i­nat­ed in 2014, was con­vert­ed - ac­cord­ing to the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion - to a re­sort with a swim­ming pool, restau­rant and dis­co. Now in T&T comes word that a 65-inch TV was de­liv­ered to one no­to­ri­ous in­mate and the free flow con­tin­ues of mo­bile phones, drugs, and firearms in­to prison.

TdA, whose “busi­ness” in­cludes sex traf­fick­ing, con­tract killings and kid­nap­pings, is known to form al­liances with the crim­i­nal en­ti­ties of oth­er coun­tries where it op­er­ates, and ex­tends in­to South/Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the “drug cor­ri­dors on the Caribbean coast.”

With the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment util­is­ing a coun­try de­fence theme in the SoE, the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) cur­rent po­lit­i­cal life­line is sim­i­lar­ly de­fence: of un­em­ployed num­bers fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment’s dis­missals which Thurs­day’s PNM Mal­abar meet­ing fo­cused on. And where PNM MP Do­minic Ro­main firm­ly stamped UNC MP/Min­is­ter Clyde El­der with El­der’s “col­lat­er­al dam­age” in­sult to work­ers, per­ma­nent­ly oblit­er­at­ing El­der’s record as an em­ploy­ee rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

Gov­ern­ment’s SoE ex­pla­na­tions will come with Mon­day’s Par­lia­ment de­bate on the mat­ter, oc­cur­ring on the three-month an­niver­sary of its April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion win.

While the lat­ter sig­nals how chal­lenged the new Gov­ern­ment is, it will al­so have to state how much the SoE’s achieved and what so­lu­tions arise with­in the prison and else­where ahead. Gov­ern­ment sources said the SoE can be short­er than the pre­scribed three months, “once strate­gic ob­jec­tives are met.” Some didn’t ex­pect the full three months, which runs in­to the Oc­to­ber 2026 Bud­get month.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, whose Ju­ly 27 may in­volve sub­mit­ting her nom­i­na­tion pa­pers as the sole nom­i­nee for the UNC’s Au­gust 17 lead­er­ship elec­tion, has, how­ev­er, telegraphed po­lit­i­cal will to “bite the bul­let” and ear­ly in the term, tack­le is­sues which stand to test Gov­ern­ment. (That’s be­yond the push­back which some Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials say is oc­cur­ring in cer­tain pub­lic sec­tor quar­ters).

While Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s mes­sag­ing has sig­nalled it won’t be busi­ness “as usu­al” and SoE moves for­ti­fy tough lead­er­ship pro­file, the fall­out for T&T’s im­age as a safe lo­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for in­vest­ment, will re­quire tan­gi­ble plans be­yond claims of “in­vestor con­fi­dence re­turn­ing.”

If there’s a “mon­ey crunch” as PNM’s Colm Im­bert claimed Thurs­day (cit­ing late pay­ment of ER­HA and Par­lia­ment staff) on the eve of Mon­day’s three-month an­niver­sary, it’s con­firmed that back­pay was processed Thurs­day, aris­ing from in­creas­es in the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s 120th re­port. This is for Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans from the last term.

It al­so in­cludes those who’ve re­turned this term - a to­tal of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 27 from both sides, plus pre­vi­ous In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors. Sev­er­ance for some con­stituen­cy of­fice work­ers will al­so be processed next week.

Un­der fire from al­leged is­sues un­earthed in var­i­ous min­istries, the PNM, a month in­to Pen­ne­lope Beck­les’ lead­er­ship, has emerged from re­ac­tive to proac­tive mode. Beck­les, like Per­sad-Bisses­sar - has al­so sig­nalled a no-non­sense ap­proach: man­dat­ing re­ports from PNM of­fi­cials to track pace.

Gen­er­al coun­cil mem­bers await this af­ter­noon’s state­ments by Beck­les and whether that in­cludes her three new deputy lead­ers and her de­ci­sion on the re­quired ap­pro­pri­ate tal­ent to bal­ance PNM’s ex­ec­u­tive and Par­lia­ment teams.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­cent “In­ter­pol watch­list” is­sue re­mains live due to unan­swered queries. The se­quence of events as Row­ley passed through An­tigua, and state­ments from that is­land’s au­thor­i­ties con­firm­ing his sto­ry, now re­quire word from oth­er rel­e­vant agen­cies.