Trinidad and To­ba­go has faced a trou­bled eco­nom­ic out­look since 2014, when en­er­gy prices de­clined. The twin pri­or­i­ties since then have been, first, to ad­dress crime and the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion, and sec­ond, to put the econ­o­my on a sol­id foun­da­tion to lim­it the ef­fects of volatil­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor. Thank­ful­ly, the coun­try has not suf­fered a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. How­ev­er, like most coun­tries, we had to al­lo­cate ad­di­tion­al re­sources to ad­dress the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which in­creased our debt bur­den.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s crime prob­lem has claimed lives, shat­tered fam­i­lies, desta­bilised com­mu­ni­ties and un­der­mined pub­lic con­fi­dence in the abil­i­ty of the State to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty. In the face of such a cri­sis, po­lit­i­cal point-scor­ing is a lux­u­ry this coun­try can no longer af­ford.

It was in­evitable that se­cu­ri­ty, the State of Emer­gency - and Gov­ern­ment ver­sus Op­po­si­tion bick­er­ing—would have arisen at Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing yes­ter­day.

On Wednes­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, while pi­lot­ing the mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for a fur­ther three months, chose to tar­get a mi­nor­i­ty group whose en­ter­prise and dis­ci­pline over gen­er­a­tions have en­abled it to ac­cu­mu­late wealth.

The Di­rec­tor of the Pol­i­cy and Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Of­fice (PAC­SO), at­tor­ney Za­heer Ali, has been tasked with al­le­vi­at­ing some of the is­sues plagu­ing our com­mu­ni­ties. He heads this spe­cialised unit un­der the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, which fo­cus­es on mul­ti­sec­toral crime pre­ven­tion, youth de­vel­op­ment, psy­choso­cial sup­port and pub­lic safe­ty ini­tia­tives aimed at strength­en­ing vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

The Gov­ern­ment is liv­ing in per­plex­i­ty. It finds it­self tan­gled in a com­pli­cat­ed sit­u­a­tion and is both con­fused and in a state of be­wil­der­ment. The sit­u­a­tion— eco­nom­ic, fi­nan­cial, on the crime front, and, for the cit­i­zen, in terms of be­ing able to live with­out fear of crime or cope with the cost of ba­sic needs—is pret­ty grim.

In sor­row­ful tri­umph, we pause to ho­n­our two tow­er­ing fig­ures of the steel­pan tra­di­tion — Ster­ling Be­tan­court and Robert “Rob­bie” Greenidge — whose lives and work helped shape one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most en­dur­ing na­tion-build­ing achieve­ments.

As the Gov­ern­ment re­turns to Par­lia­ment to­day to seek a three-month ex­ten­sion of the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE), it does so against the back­drop of the Op­po­si­tion’s threat of le­gal ac­tion.

The na­tion is once again con­front­ed with the un­bear­able loss of a child. Twelve-year-old Mer­cedez Layne’s life has been vi­o­lent­ly cut short and an­oth­er griev­ing fam­i­ly has been left to nav­i­gate the un­end­ing void that fol­lows such bru­tal­i­ty.

When­ev­er a close ex­am­i­na­tion is done of the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go — whether through cur­rent da­ta or pro­jec­tions — the con­clu­sion from econ­o­mists and busi­ness lead­ers is the same: It must be di­ver­si­fied be­yond its heavy de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) con­tin­ues to in­flict great harm on the na­tion’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

Last Wednes­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go was elect­ed to the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (UN­SC) for two years, 2027–2028, by an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of votes. T&T there­by be­comes one of ten non-per­ma­nent mem­bers in ad­di­tion to the five per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tives: Chi­na, France, Rus­sia, the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States. These mem­bers hold ve­to pow­er, mean­ing a sin­gle "no" vote from any of them can block a res­o­lu­tion even if it has ma­jor­i­ty sup­port.