While Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, chair­man of the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, is busy hand­ing out “A” grade awards to the Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment, the killers con­tin­ue with­out the slight­est con­cern for any pos­si­ble state ac­tion which can de­ter their ef­forts.

Imag­ine that while the num­ber one prob­lem be­ing faced by the peo­ple of T&T, one that has been in­creas­ing in in­ten­si­ty, bru­tal­i­ty and with lit­tle care for what the State and its se­cu­ri­ty in­sti­tu­tions have been able to do about it, con­tin­ues, a se­nior Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter oc­cu­pies him­self with grant­i­ng high aca­d­e­m­ic rat­ings to his Prime Min­is­ter. Is Min­is­ter Young’s award an at­tempt to ma­m­aguy his boss?

It’s the kind of at­ti­tude and ac­tion that be­lit­tle the in­tel­li­gence of cit­i­zens. Even the con­scious and hon­est mem­bers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment who are faced with the ter­ror of the crim­i­nals must be em­bar­rassed by Min­is­ter Young’s emp­ty boast.

What the coun­try should be hear­ing from Min­is­ter Young are rea­sons for the con­tin­u­ing fail­ure of the in­cum­bent ad­min­is­tra­tion to be­gin along the road to trans­form the na­ture of the econ­o­my. What projects and poli­cies have the Gov­ern­ment de­vel­oped to move the econ­o­my away from al­most com­plete de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor to de­serve the A grade?

Min­is­ter Young prob­a­bly has not no­ticed the so­cial and hu­man de­cay that is hap­pen­ing far and wide in the city, town and coun­try, where in­creas­ing num­bers of peo­ple are mak­ing their homes on the streets. Maybe he does not move around to places where un­for­tu­nate cit­i­zens, those ad­dict­ed to mind-bend­ing and life-di­min­ish­ing drugs, are liv­ing on the very edge of hu­man­i­ty.

So too Min­is­ter Young, more so that you were a pre­vi­ous min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, you must be aware of the con­tin­u­ing in­fil­tra­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal ac­tors to join with the lo­cals. You must be fol­low­ing the crime news com­ing out of To­ba­go, the new hunt­ing grounds for the crim­i­nals and the gangs. While you are mak­ing grand but hol­low state­ments about the achieve­ments of the ad­min­is­tra­tion you be­long to, you should be re­mind­ed that the coun­try is drift­ing fur­ther away from the goal of be­ing able to feed it­self to an ac­cept­able lev­el.

As Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, re­spon­si­ble for the Gov­ern­ment here hav­ing se­cured en­er­gy agree­ments with Venezuela, you must be aware of the ob­vi­ous prob­lems that T&T is like­ly to be faced with giv­en the dis­sat­is­fac­tion be­ing ex­pressed by sur­round­ing coun­tries and the in­flu­en­tial USA, with the fair­ness and ac­cu­ra­cy of the elec­tion re­sults there.

By the time the next con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly ap­point­ed gen­er­al elec­tions are due to­wards the third to fourth quar­ter of 2025, this Gov­ern­ment led by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and con­tain­ing min­is­ters such as Young, will be re­quired to tell the coun­try of the mean­ing­ful and trans­for­ma­tive achieve­ments in Gov­ern­ment.

In the lead-in to that pe­ri­od, spokesper­sons for the Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter Young and Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, will be re­quired to deal in re­al achieve­ments, not aca­d­e­m­ic awards self-giv­en. The ad­vice to Min­is­ter Young is to clam-up and re­dou­ble his ef­forts to bring vis­i­ble and tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to an elec­torate that has re­posed faith in the Gov­ern­ment for two terms.