Con­tin­u­ing from yes­ter­day's ed­i­to­r­i­al, which raised ques­tions about the ab­sence so far of de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on what has been re­port­ed by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump re­gard­ing the oblit­er­a­tion of an al­leged drug traf­fick­ing ves­sel in the Caribbean Sea, it must be said that T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's re­sponse needs to be a lit­tle more mea­sured than it has been thus far.

“Kill them all vi­o­lent­ly,” is sure­ly not the kind of state­ment that should em­anate from a Prime Min­is­ter in the cir­cum­stances of the re­port­ed, but yet to be proven with sol­id ev­i­dence, killing of 11 drug traf­fick­ers al­leged­ly mak­ing their way in the Caribbean Sea with a pay­load of drugs.

The state­ment, though, re­sem­bles that which in her then role as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion cam­paign­ing for po­lit­i­cal of­fice she be­came fa­mous for: “Emp­ty the mat­ic on them.”

It seems, there­fore, that the Prime Min­is­ter has cal­cu­lat­ed that if that kind of pub­lic com­men­tary as­sist­ed in get­ting her in­to of­fice, then why de­part from it?

There is much to be said about the dif­fer­ences be­tween a cam­paign­ing politi­cian des­per­ate­ly seek­ing to out­do her op­po­nents in brag­gado­cio and hy­per­bole, and a Prime Min­is­ter in of­fice mak­ing in­formed and cal­cu­lat­ed judge­ments about an in­ter­na­tion­al event.

That dif­fer­ence is mag­ni­fied sev­er­al times when the mat­ter be­ing re­ferred to con­tin­ues to have unan­swered ques­tions and de­tails about its op­er­a­tions, and which may have ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al ram­i­fi­ca­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is quite right in say­ing that the in­ter­ests she serves are those of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The is­sue, though, is whether she has to go out on a limb, be­ing ill and or un­ad­vised. More­over, her state­ment can turn out to be, in re­al­i­ty, against the in­ter­ests of the coun­try.

Has she been ad­vised, is she tak­ing ad­vice on her state­ments as Prime Min­is­ter and as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive voice of T&T; or is she sim­ply al­low­ing emo­tions to guide her re­spons­es? Those are se­ri­ous ques­tions to be an­swered by Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

This is be­cause hold­ing the of­fice does not give her the lib­er­ty to say what she is pro­pelled to say by loy­al­ty to a for­eign state.

“Lan­guage mat­ters,” was a key re­sponse to the PM’s state­ment by lead­ing T&T in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert, Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Bryan.

“The lan­guage is­sued re­cent­ly by the Prime Min­is­ter is desta­bil­is­ing. Yes, it’s al­right to be friends of Pres­i­dent Trump, but you don’t have to be­come the in­car­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Trump,” the for­mer di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at UWI, St Au­gus­tine, told this news­pa­per.

Pro­fes­sor Andy Knight, mean­while, not­ed that the Prime Min­is­ter's state­ment is dis­turb­ing due to the pos­si­ble il­le­gal­i­ty of the strike.

“Drug traf­fick­ing, though crim­i­nal, is not an act of war,” said the pro­fes­sor of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions at a ma­jor Cana­di­an uni­ver­si­ty.

The clear mean­ing be­ing that such ac­tions may be per­mis­si­ble in a war sit­u­a­tion but not in the present cir­cum­stances. Even so, un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law, “il­le­gal war crimes” are pros­e­cutable.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has set out on her sec­ond term of of­fice promis­ing to be a “dif­fer­ent Kam­la.”

She has to be care­ful, though, of her modus operan­di go­ing for­ward.