Lit­tle en­cap­su­lates the un­pre­pared­ness of suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments and our par­lia­men­tar­i­ans more than the fire­works fi­as­co last week. Hav­ing passed the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences (Amend­ment) Act, 2025 (al­so re­ferred to as the Fire­works Reg­u­la­tion Bill/Act), the Gov­ern­ment, ap­par­ent­ly be­liev­ing that big talk equalled ac­tion, called on the po­lice to act ac­cord­ing­ly and they did. They did noth­ing. While it ap­peared like ro­bust leg­is­la­tion, in prac­tice the po­lice were un­able to charge any­one. Of course. How do you charge any­one who sets off a dozen fire­works and stops? Where is the ev­i­dence that a cer­tain per­son did that? Did our ho­n­ourable par­lia­men­tar­i­ans re­al­ly be­lieve that their friends or neigh­bours would point the fin­ger at a neigh­bour and say, “He did it?” Or that a per­son­al video would stand up in court as ev­i­dence?

Did par­lia­men­tar­i­ans not con­sult with the po­lice about the prac­ti­cal as­pects of this law? Not a man said any­thing con­struc­tive and the en­tire set vot­ed in favour. The bill passed on De­cem­ber 9 in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, with a vote of 38 mem­bers for, ze­ro against and no ab­sten­tions, and on the fol­low­ing day in the Sen­ate, all 30 sen­a­tors present vot­ed in favour.

The leg­is­la­tion re­ceived bi­par­ti­san and tri-par­ti­san sup­port, with both the Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors back­ing the mea­sures aimed at reg­u­lat­ing fire­works use in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Amaz­ing re­al­ly.

Could it be that the fire­works lob­by has more po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence than the po­lice, or med­ical pro­fes­sion, or the T&T So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals, or the gen­er­al pub­lic and so minds are con­sumed with oth­er mat­ters?

One as­sumes par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of our prime min­is­ters, will now blame the pub­lic for the break­down in the law.

This busi­ness of blam­ing “The Pub­lic” for every­thing, with­out show­ing lead­er­ship to en­cour­age the pub­lic to fol­low, per­vades so­ci­ety.

For years, our Min­istry of Health has re­fused to have a pub­lic health cam­paign to en­cour­age and lead Tri­nis in­to a cul­ture of eat­ing well be­cause, as they say to peo­ple like me, “Is we cul­ture!”

So, no need to do your work prop­er­ly, en­act leg­is­la­tion, ed­u­cate etc. It’s en­tire­ly “The Pub­lic’s” fault, they are over­weight.

We are now on to our sec­ond Prime Min­is­ter in a row, in­tent on blam­ing this amor­phous en­ti­ty, “The Pub­lic” for every­thing wrong in T&T. We had 10 years of Mr Kei­th Row­ley con­stant­ly com­plain­ing, with­out do­ing any­thing about the prob­lem, about “un­pro­duc­tive pub­lic ser­vants,” to “in­sub­or­di­nate be­hav­iour of some State of­fi­cial,” to ad­vis­ing women to “choose their men more wise­ly,” to ques­tions about the dif­fi­cul­ty of gov­ern­ing T&T by stat­ing it stems from the “free na­ture of the peo­ple” who some­times “waste time and act fool­ish­ly.”

The present PM seems to have de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue in this vein. I have the great­est re­spect and ad­mi­ra­tion for Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar but some of her out­bursts reek of dis­dain for this so-called en­ti­ty, “The Pub­lic.” Call­ing T&T a “law­less dump” may sat­is­fy some of her sup­port­ers but does noth­ing to im­prove mat­ters. Her lat­est state­ment, say­ing that the pub­lic’s be­hav­iour will de­ter­mine fu­ture changes with re­spect to a ban on fire­works and the re­vi­sion of fines for traf­fic of­fences if peo­ple be­have, sounds very much to me like the way Miss Al­li­mani, my kinder­garten teacher, spoke to us chil­dren in 1950.

We are not chil­dren, we are adults and as my col­league Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh said last Fri­day in the T&T Guardian, “In med­i­cine we aban­doned the idea of hu­mil­i­a­tion as ther­a­py a long time ago.”

Not every PM feels the need to in­sult cit­i­zens. It is not an er­ror that the two best liked PMs are Mr Patrick Man­ning and Mr Bas­deo Pan­day who, for all their mis­takes, sel­dom spoke down to any­one pub­licly. Speak­ing in con­de­scend­ing terms to peo­ple is not lead­er­ship.

Lead­er­ship means be­ing open to the peo­ple, be­ing avail­able, not tak­ing ques­tions from re­porters on the pave­ment on the way to Par­lia­ment or is­su­ing ad­vi­sories. It means be­ing able to com­mu­ni­cate with em­pa­thy, not con­stant crit­i­cism. It means set­ting aside time to talk pub­licly with all the peo­ple, not on­ly the five or six who ad­vise you. It means build­ing trust with “The Pub­lic” and tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for mis­takes, not back­ing down and say­ing if we “be­have,” the law might be changed.

Lead­er­ship is hard work, con­stant work, 24 hours a day, with a re­li­able team that pos­sess­es a clear sense of di­rec­tion, so that every­one knows where they stand on every is­sue of na­tion­al im­por­tance. That it­self on­ly comes with hard, ex­haust­ing work, nose to the grind­stone type of thing, so that con­fi­dence is in­spired through­out the coun­try, so “The Pub­lic” will un­der­stand and fol­low what the Gov­ern­ment is at­tempt­ing to do.