The sud­den dis­man­tling and re­moval of the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary-grade radar sys­tem from the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point rais­es a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: what, ex­act­ly, did T&T gain from its pres­ence?

The news re­ports of the week­end were filled with a tan­gle of crime news, views, al­le­ga­tions, the pas­sage of the most re­cent State of Emer­gency laws in the Par­lia­ment, con­fused claims and coun­ters sur­round­ing the mur­der of Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal, and in­for­ma­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter of the ben­e­fits to be gained from T&T’s part­ner­ship in the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as.

On Thurs­day, March 19th, Nav Raa­tri be­gins. The Di­vine Moth­er is wor­shipped over a nine-night pe­ri­od. Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, at the cul­mi­na­tion of Nav Raa­tri, the Hin­du fes­ti­val of Ram Nau­mi is cel­e­brat­ed. The name Ra­ma holds great spir­i­tu­al pow­er, com­pris­ing of two syl­la­bles:-

Last Sat­ur­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump con­vened a meet­ing of heads of 13 coun­tries of the hemi­sphere to for­mal­ly es­tab­lish an al­liance that he con­ceived, un­der terms that his team de­vised, un­der­writ­ten by a procla­ma­tion that he craft­ed, in a cer­e­mo­ny he alone spoke at, at a time that he de­ter­mined, at a re­sort that he owns.

The Unit­ed States re­mains a re­gion­al hege­mon in­tent on con­trol­ling Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean. There is strength in num­bers, so coun­tries must en­sure mu­tu­al pro­tec­tion and ad­vance their com­mon in­ter­ests. The Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas, in both its orig­i­nal and re­vised forms, em­bod­ies the spir­it of re­gion­al and func­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion.

Child pro­tec­tion is of­ten dis­cussed on­ly af­ter tragedy strikes and the in­evitable ques­tion fol­lows: who knew and why was noth­ing done? This cy­cle has re­peat­ed it­self far too of­ten. While the coun­try has en­act­ed im­por­tant leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing the Chil­dren Act 2012, the chal­lenge in­creas­ing­ly ap­pears to lie not in the law it­self but in the speed and ef­fec­tive­ness of in­ter­ven­tion when warn­ing signs ap­pear.

The State of Emer­gency’s ex­ten­sion un­til June was key on yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment agen­da, but Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar’s state­ments on var­i­ous is­sues was what held fo­cus first.

In jus­ti­fy­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion of an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE) on March 3, 2026, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said T&T's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), which she chairs, not­ed that fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 31 end of the pre­vi­ous SoE, there had been "an in­crease in vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty across the coun­try, most of which has been car­ried out by mem­bers of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs."

The Do­ral Char­ter signed dur­ing the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit last Sat­ur­day sig­nals greater co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the US and T&T to dis­man­tle drug car­tels.

The Shield of the Amer­i­c­as group of 12 coun­tries to which Trinidad and To­ba­go has signed on, is fo­cused on mil­i­tary ap­proach­es to gang and drug re­duc­tion and elim­i­na­tion.

A small, but very sig­nif­i­cant sto­ry re­lat­ed to a move to give le­gal pro­tec­tion to el­e­ments of the Cedar Grove Sug­ar Es­tate in Palmiste, south Trinidad, is an ex­treme­ly im­por­tant ini­tia­tive to pre­serve his­tor­i­cal relics of an era which has passed.

Every year, since I can re­call, there have been these Car­ni­val post-mortems de­signed to con­sid­er, among oth­er things, the so­cio-eco­nom­ic val­ue of this an­nu­al event. Some of it has been well-in­formed ex­am­i­na­tions guid­ed by mea­sur­able out­comes, oth­ers sim­ply to ex­hib­it lim­it­less ca­pac­i­ty to en­gage in self-serv­ing chat­ter and fan­ta­sy.