Two mat­ters con­cern­ing chil­dren are cur­rent­ly in the news, gen­er­at­ing con­sid­er­able pub­lic at­ten­tion and emo­tion­al in­vest­ment.

Three strong cur­rents—1) nav­i­gat­ing the geopo­lit­i­cal ter­rain with pow­er­ful coun­tries in an un­cer­tain world; 2) In­dia’s civil­i­sa­tion­al reach and in­flu­ence glob­al­ly; and

Twelve days have now elapsed since Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates sub­mit­ted her let­ter of res­ig­na­tion to the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on May 1, yet Pen­ne­lope Beck­les re­mains locked in an in­def­i­nite state of in­er­tia.

The four horse­men of the chil­dren’s apoc­a­lypse: lead, cig­a­rettes, for­mu­la and so­cial me­dia. Lead is a brain poi­son. Used to be found in com­mer­cial paint, bat­ter­ies and gaso­line. Paint last­ed longer, bat­ter­ies and gaso­line stronger. Lead tastes sweet and it poi­soned hun­dreds of thou­sands of chil­dren who ate paint chips con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with lead. Af­ter tremen­dous fights be­tween the lead in­dus­try and the med­ical pro­fes­sion, it was banned in most coun­tries around the 1980s.

The pro­pos­al to re­name Nel­son Is­land has ig­nit­ed a na­tion­al de­bate about how our coun­try’s com­plex his­to­ry should be re­mem­bered in a mod­ern so­ci­ety grap­pling with the lega­cies of colo­nial­ism, mi­gra­tion and iden­ti­ty. This de­bate ex­tends well be­yond a sim­ple change of a sign­post or map ref­er­ence.

Along with the na­tion­al Ju­di­cia­ry and the mag­is­tra­cy, the In­dus­tri­al Court is bring­ing in­to ques­tion the abil­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as an in­de­pen­dent coun­try now 64 years old, to have a ju­di­cial sys­tem which can be re­lied up­on to de­liv­er jus­tice in a man­ner re­quired.

May 30, 1845 to May 30 2026, marks a sig­nif­i­cant part in the de­vel­op­ment of East In­di­ans here in this part of the world. There is no doubt that this pe­ri­od of 181 years re­quired sev­er­al at­trib­ut­es to im­prove the pres­ence of East In­di­ans in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Re­duc­ing crime in Trinidad and To­ba­go is one of the coun­try’s most se­ri­ous na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties. It is char­ac­terised by high homi­cide rates, gang vi­o­lence, traf­fick­ing in nar­cotics and il­le­gal firearms and is in­flu­enced by so­cioe­co­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty. The sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened over the years, and in­tro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion alone can­not solve it overnight. Re­duc­ing crime re­quires a mul­ti­fac­eted ap­proach and a pro­longed ef­fort. More im­por­tant­ly, the sit­u­a­tion re­quires con­sid­ered, cal­i­brat­ed and co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion, not more laws. En­force­ment, not talk. If this is not done, busi­ness op­er­at­ing costs will con­tin­ue to rise, con­fi­dence in civ­il in­sti­tu­tions will de­cline and so­cial frag­men­ta­tion could re­sult.

For decades, Trinidad and To­ba­go has proud­ly de­scribed it­self as the cul­tur­al heart­beat of the Caribbean. Yet, while the coun­try cel­e­brates its mu­sic and cre­ativ­i­ty every Car­ni­val sea­son, many lo­cal artistes still face enor­mous chal­lenges in gain­ing con­sis­tent in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion and sup­port.

Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion bat­tles in Par­lia­ment on is­sues in these fi­nal three weeks of the First Ses­sion of this Par­lia­ment’s term have been the biggest—set­ting the stage for con­tin­u­ing de­vel­op­ments when the Sec­ond Ses­sion be­gins soon.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing’s killing of three peo­ple in Bel­mont - in­clud­ing a 23-month-old ba­by boy who was be­ing tak­en to day­care by his fa­ther and moth­er - shocked and sick­ened many peo­ple in this coun­try, who un­for­tu­nate­ly have grown ac­cus­tomed to the al­most dai­ly re­ports of mur­ders.

I don’t think the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance should treat the mid-year re­view as just a re­al­lo­ca­tion ex­er­cise for this fis­cal year. He has to do that, of course, but I think the Gov­ern­ment as a whole should be think­ing about get­ting through this 2026 fis­cal year with­out cri­sis. They should al­so be think­ing hard of fis­cal 2027 and 2028 be­cause, as our Gov­ern­ment, they need to pre­pare the ground to op­ti­mise the wind­fall in nat­ur­al gas an­tic­i­pat­ed in 2028.