The 50-year-old friend­ship be­tween Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Dr Tim Gopeesingh sur­vived their clash­es in par­lia­ment when Row­ley was Op­po­si­tion Leader and Gopeesingh was Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. Dr Gopeesingh, an ob­ste­tri­cian, helped to de­liv­er the Row­leys el­dest daugh­ter close to 40 years ago.

The Hin­du pop­u­la­tion is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.1 bil­lion, ac­count­ing for 80 per cent or four in every five per­sons.

Every new ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumes of­fice with a man­date to con­front the un­re­solved chal­lenges of its pre­de­ces­sor, or at the very least, to make a cred­i­ble ef­fort to ad­dress the most press­ing is­sues it in­her­its. No gov­ern­ment can solve every prob­lem overnight. Yet it must demon­strate both in­tent and di­rec­tion. In pre­sent­ing the Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tion last Mon­day, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance ac­knowl­edged that the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion was elect­ed on the promise of change—af­ter cit­i­zens grew weary of as­sur­ances of im­prove­ment while their cir­cum­stances de­te­ri­o­rat­ed. The cen­tral ques­tion, then, is what tan­gi­ble changes will now fol­low.

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) de­ci­sion to can­cel its con­tro­ver­sial $3.4 bil­lion De­sign-Build-Fi­nance hous­ing pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise was the cor­rect one. While the move has sparked po­lit­i­cal de­bate and re­newed scruti­ny of the hous­ing sec­tor, the over­rid­ing prin­ci­ple must re­main the pro­tec­tion of the pub­lic in­ter­est and the in­tegri­ty of the coun­try’s pro­cure­ment sys­tem.

Every Fa­ther’s Day, I give thanks to God for hav­ing had the guid­ance and in­spi­ra­tion of my fa­ther, the late Jus­tice Lennox Deyals­ingh.

June 19 re­mains a defin­ing date in the mod­ern his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go. On this day in 1937, labour un­rest erupt­ed in the deep south, as work­ing-class men and women rose against the in­hu­mane con­di­tions in the oil­fields and sug­ar es­tates—then the back­bone of the colo­nial econ­o­my.

The Ka­reem Mar­celle rant on a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal plat­form about In­di­an and African mu­tu­al dis­like for each oth­er dis­turbed a lot of peo­ple.

The Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) is head­ing in­to its 2027 bud­get cy­cle with an am­bi­tious re­form agen­da, grow­ing con­cern over mem­ber-state con­tri­bu­tions—in­clud­ing the sub­stan­tial Unit­ed States quo­ta—and calls for a re­newed po­lit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion about its fu­ture.

The 2026 Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, pre­sent­ed on Mon­day, was framed as a con­fi­dent de­c­la­ra­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go has turned a fis­cal cor­ner. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo point­ed to a nar­row­er deficit, stronger rev­enues, re­newed in­vestor con­fi­dence and a Gov­ern­ment in­tent on “pro­tect­ing the peo­ple” while mod­ernising the State.

“The sor­row for the dead is the on­ly sor­row from which we refuse to be di­vorced. Every oth­er wound we seek to heal, every oth­er af­flic­tion to for­get; but this wound we con­sid­er it a du­ty to keep open; this af­flic­tion we cher­ish and brood over in soli­tude” Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing (1783-1859).

The 2026 Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view is as much a po­lit­i­cal doc­u­ment as it is a fis­cal up­date, pre­sent­ed by a gov­ern­ment ea­ger to demon­strate that, af­ter one year in of­fice, it has be­gun to re­verse eco­nom­ic de­cline, re­store con­fi­dence and re­build State in­sti­tu­tions.

The po­lit­i­cal ha­rangue among Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment dur­ing last Fri­day night’s Fi­nance Stand­ing Com­mit­tee meet­ing re­flects a trou­bling es­ca­la­tion in ten­sions be­tween the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).