One year af­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les as­sumed lead­er­ship of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), she can rea­son­ably claim to have achieved one im­por­tant ob­jec­tive: sta­bil­is­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go's old­est po­lit­i­cal par­ty af­ter one of the most bruis­ing de­feats in its 69-year his­to­ry.

The in­creas­ing­ly com­plex glob­al so­ci­ety de­mands height­ened men­tal pro­cess­ing to learn, un­der­stand and process in­for­ma­tion from our stu­dents, es­pe­cial­ly if they are to ben­e­fit from op­por­tu­ni­ties that will be­come avail­able to them. How­ev­er, our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem can­not re­main as it is now and has a tremen­dous amount of work to do to rise out of its present slug­gish­ness.

There are as­pects of the de­ten­tion of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, that ex­pose a long­stand­ing and deeply trou­bling re­al­i­ty with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem—one that de­mands con­tin­ued scruti­ny and pub­lic ex­po­sure.

Sec­tion 4 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go en­shrines 13 fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms, guar­an­teed to all with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion based on race, ori­gin, colour, re­li­gion or sex. These in­clude the rights to life, lib­er­ty, se­cu­ri­ty of the per­son, en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty and due process. It al­so af­firms equal­i­ty be­fore the law, pri­va­cy and free­doms of ex­pres­sion, as­sem­bly, move­ment and re­li­gious be­lief.

Across Trinidad and To­ba­go, the ten­sion be­tween job cre­ation and fis­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty is emerg­ing as one of the defin­ing eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy dilem­mas of the mo­ment. While sta­ble em­ploy­ment re­mains a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty, re­cent de­vel­op­ments in To­ba­go and Port-of-Spain sig­nal that the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry of pub­lic sec­tor hir­ing and wage com­mit­ments is plac­ing in­creas­ing strain on the State’s ca­pac­i­ty to bal­ance im­me­di­ate needs with long-term de­vel­op­ment.

The glob­al sce­nario, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­tin­u­ing dra­mas, stopped cy­cling in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions mo­men­tar­i­ly on Wednes­day, af­ter the rare seis­mic dou­blet earth­quakes shat­tered Venezuela—and ter­ri­to­ries unit­ed in sol­i­dar­i­ty, con­do­lences and aid of­fers to the strick­en coun­try.

The first year of any Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is of­ten marked by good­will, high ex­pec­ta­tions and the ben­e­fit of the doubt. The sec­ond year is dif­fer­ent: the pub­lic be­gins to judge not promis­es, but re­sults.

Yes­ter­day’s im­ages from Cara­cas were noth­ing short of cat­a­stroph­ic—col­lapsed build­ings, res­i­dents dig­ging through rub­ble in search of loved ones and am­bu­lances car­ry­ing the in­jured to over­whelmed hos­pi­tals and morgues.

The ul­ti­mate tragedy of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion’s (T&TEC) “pro­tect­ed list” ex­pose is that it makes the com­mis­sion look like it has been act­ing un­der po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tives to do some­thing in­ap­pro­pri­ate. It re­vealed the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate was us­ing pow­er and in­flu­ence to shield cer­tain po­lit­i­cal and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties from pay­ment of elec­tric­i­ty bills at tax­pay­ers’ ex­pense. And third and most im­por­tant, it re­in­forces the view in the pub­lic mind that or­di­nary cit­i­zens are pres­sured to pay and ha­rassed with pow­er cuts, while the priv­i­leged are giv­en a free rein by un­writ­ten rules that put them in a cat­e­go­ry of un­touch­ables above oth­er cit­i­zens.

If the pro­posed ini­tia­tive in To­ba­go to trans­form ca­su­al labour un­der the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) in­to or­gan­ised food pro­duc­tion is pur­sued with se­ri­ous­ness, the na­tion could take an im­por­tant step to­ward food self-suf­fi­cien­cy.

It is un­for­tu­nate that not many of us who have fol­lowed in­te­gra­tion mat­ters over the years have been re­mind­ing re­gion­al lead­ers and pol­i­cy­mak­ers about the hol­low PR that ac­com­pa­nied the adop­tion of the Cari­com Char­ter of Civ­il So­ci­ety (CCS) al­most 30 years ago.

The Unit­ed King­dom’s re­cent­ly pub­lished Coun­try Pol­i­cy and In­for­ma­tion Note on gangs in Trinidad and To­ba­go should make for un­com­fort­able read­ing for every cit­i­zen, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.