RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

May 2024 was marked by trag­ic mur­ders, re­lent­less home in­va­sions, po­lit­i­cal up­heaval with­in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), and eco­nom­ic hard­ship.

Like the pre­vi­ous months, is­sues of gov­er­nance and crime took cen­tre stage. The de­ba­cle in­volv­ing the $2.6 bil­lion dis­crep­an­cy in fi­nan­cial ac­count­ing be­tween Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass con­tin­ued, last­ing through­out the month.

While the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) cracked down on er­rant ten­ants, the Board of In­land Rev­enue al­so seized the as­sets of tax de­fault­ers.

At the start of the wet sea­son in mid-May, wa­ter short­ages con­tin­ued and food prices sky-rock­et­ed. Protests broke out among mar­ket ven­dors in Rio Claro. Adding to the ten­sion were rum­bles by the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) about an al­leged at­tack on the work­ing class by the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Where $2.6 bil­lion gone?

May 1 kicked off with an abysmal May Day march in San Fer­nan­do, as trade union­ists de­mand­ed to know what hap­pened to the $2.6 bil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars which were un­ac­count­ed for, based on the 2023 rev­enue fig­ures. Al­le­ga­tions of a plot against Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass sur­faced but she stood her ground with the back­ing of for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan as her le­gal coun­sel.

On May 15, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Im­bert at­trib­uted the $2.6 bil­lion rev­enue dis­crep­an­cy to dou­ble book­ings and sys­tem mal­func­tions at the Cen­tral Bank, but Ram­dass de­fend­ed her find­ings. She sought in­de­pen­dent le­gal coun­sel, al­leg­ing threats to her of­fice’s cred­i­bil­i­ty, while At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour dis­missed her claims as un­war­rant­ed.

Amid broad­er pub­lic frus­tra­tion, on May 30, the Gov­ern­ment got the green light to im­pose prop­er­ty tax on cit­i­zens af­ter the Court of Ap­peal ruled unan­i­mous­ly that the T&T Rev­enue Act was valid and con­sti­tu­tion­al and did not breach the rights of cit­i­zens. This meant prop­er­ty tax was com­ing.

The UNC ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of bur­den­ing poor peo­ple. Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al com­plained that the prop­er­ty tax val­u­a­tion sys­tem was not eq­ui­table.

Mean­while, the HDC al­so came in for con­dem­na­tion as it ramped up its ar­rears-re­cov­ery dri­ve.

On May 3, the HDC an­nounced it had evict­ed 18 ten­ants for il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion and ar­rears. In ad­di­tion to evic­tions, po­lice cracked down on fraud­u­lent HDC lease agree­ments and ar­rest­ed a Ch­agua­nas man. This led the HDC to is­sue a re­sponse on May 30 ask­ing the pub­lic to be­ware of scam­mers.

Mur­der may­hem

May was al­so gripped by a se­ries of vi­o­lent in­ci­dents, in­clud­ing the trag­ic mur­der of 19-year-old Dar­i­on Pierre, whose body was found at the base of a precipice in Gas­par­il­lo on May 2. An au­top­sy re­vealed he was shot in the head be­fore he was thrown off the precipice.

On May 5, the na­tion re­coiled in hor­ror when a mass shoot­ing in Phase 1, Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Co­corite, left four peo­ple dead and eight oth­ers wound­ed.

The de­ceased were iden­ti­fied as 22-year-old Shaquille Ot­t­ley, 57-year-old An­to­nio Jack, 31-year-old Sadi­ki Ot­t­ley and 36-year-old Jonathan Os­mond.

Po­lice said the at­tack was gang-re­lat­ed, height­en­ing fears of re­tal­ia­to­ry vi­o­lence.

A week lat­er, an­oth­er shock­ing rev­e­la­tion oc­curred when the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice re­vealed a crim­i­nal gang op­er­at­ing in East Trinidad was keep­ing sur­veil­lance on the po­lice. It was al­leged the gang had in­stalled sur­veil­lance cam­eras on util­i­ty poles to mon­i­tor po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty at the Arou­ca, Tu­na­puna and St Joseph po­lice sta­tions. On May 12, po­lice seized 23 il­le­gal CCTV cam­eras in the Tu­na­puna com­mu­ni­ty.

On May 13, UNC Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein called on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to in­ves­ti­gate why 41 cam­eras were still miss­ing, say­ing there was a po­lice ex­er­cise in Bangladesh, St Joseph, be­lieved to be a crim­i­nal mon­i­tor­ing hub, which was out­fit­ted with two large TV screens, show­ing a to­tal of 62 cam­eras record­ing live feeds of the St Joseph, Arou­ca and Tu­na­puna po­lice sta­tions.

He ques­tioned whether this was linked to the shake-up which

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oc­curred with­in the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), when five in­di­vid­u­als, in­clud­ing pas­tor Ian Brown and for­mer di­rec­tor Roger Best, were ar­rest­ed dur­ing a crim­i­nal probe.

On May 13, child wel­fare al­so came in­to fo­cus af­ter Child Af­fairs Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy re­ceived a re­port that a 12-year-old boy had been abus­ing chil­dren at a res­i­den­tial care fa­cil­i­ty in Cou­va. On May 20, the 12-year-old and two of his vic­tims were re­moved from the fa­cil­i­ty as de­tails of the mo­lesta­tion were pub­lished. The in­ci­dent sparked re­newed scruti­ny of the coun­try’s res­i­den­tial care homes, with ad­vo­ca­cy groups urg­ing com­pre­hen­sive over­sight.

On May 18, An­isha Ho­sein-Singh, daugh­ter of the own­er of one of the Sauce Dou­bles fran­chis­es, was ab­duct­ed. Five days lat­er on May 23, she was found at the Ca­roni Cre­ma­tion site. As the month came to a close, four sus­pects linked to Ho­sein-Singh’s kid­nap­ping were shot dead by po­lice in a forest­ed area in St Au­gus­tine.

Through­out the month, home in­va­sions al­so con­tin­ued. An­i­mal ac­tivist Jow­elle De Souza was al­so beat­en and robbed on May 1 at her Palmiste home.

The month closed with a 66-year-old Pi­ar­co pen­sion­er be­ing set on fire at her home by rob­bers when she re­fused to hand over valu­ables. She sur­vived the or­deal.

Eco­nom­ic/en­vi­ron­men­tal hard­ship

Apart from crime, the month al­so fea­tured en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges.

On May 3, To­ba­go beach­es re­opened af­ter British na­tion­al Pe­ter Smith was at­tacked by a shark to­wards the end of the pre­vi­ous month. By May 5, fish­er­men were hunt­ing sharks in To­ba­go’s wa­ters, spark­ing crit­i­cism from en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­vo­cates and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

In mid-May, in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­gard­ing the $30 mil­lion oil spill in To­ba­go ad­vanced, with au­thor­i­ties con­firm­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port to cov­er clean-up costs.

On May 21, To­ba­go fish­er­folk and tourism-de­pen­dent busi­ness­es com­plained over de­lays in com­pen­sa­tion.

On the agri­cul­tur­al front, co­conut farm­ers faced sig­nif­i­cant loss­es as a sup­ply short­age led to high­er prices. Co­conut wa­ter be­came scarce. NAMDE­V­CO mon­i­tored the sit­u­a­tion, but the is­sue reignit­ed de­bates about the re­silience of the lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

Through­out the month, the Gov­ern­ment al­so cracked down on tax de­fault­ers.

On May 20, it was re­vealed that pop­u­lar DJ An­tho­ny “Chi­nese Laun­dry” Chow Lin On owed $34 mil­lion to the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) for un­paid tax­es since 2015. The BIR seized the ac­counts of the T&T Ra­dio Net­work (TTRN), the par­ent com­pa­ny of ra­dio sta­tions 96.1 We FM, STAR 94.7 and 107.7 Mu­sic for Life.

On May 23, Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) board chair­man Nigel Ed­wards ad­vised tax­pay­ers to get their tax­es in or­der, say­ing over $15 bil­lion was owed and this would be re­couped with­in three years.

UNC in dis­ar­ray

The po­lit­i­cal are­na was marked by con­tin­ued in­ter­nal dis­putes with­in the UNC.

On May 4, Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray and three oth­er Op­po­si­tion MPs again called for the par­ty to hold na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions in June. They faced crit­i­cism from par­ty of­fi­cials, who said there was no word of post­pone­ment. The feud deep­ened by mid-month when they crit­i­cised UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s per­for­mance.

Days ear­li­er, four of the five MPs were present in Par­lia­ment but left be­fore a Gov­ern­ment mo­tion on mat­ters per­tain­ing to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al came up for a vote. The Gov­ern­ment’s 19 votes passed the mo­tion. The UNC on­ly had 14 of its 19 MPs present as five were ab­sent. Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er said if all 19 had been present, the vote would have been dead­locked and the mo­tion de­feat­ed. From then on, these MPs were called dis­si­dents.

On May 11, Haynes-Al­leyne open­ly crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar and said she was will­ing to face the con­se­quences.

On May 13, the UNC an­nounced its Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive (Na­tex) elec­tions had been set for June 15.

On May 22, Paray an­nounced he would be lead­ing a slate called the Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots to con­test the in­ter­nal elec­tions. Paray con­firmed that Haynes-Al­leyne and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir would be con­test­ing the post of deputy po­lit­i­cal leader un­der his slate.

By the end of the month, as the UNC’s in­ter­nal elec­tion cam­paign ramped up, Paray lament­ed the col­lapse of key par­ty struc­tures, high­light­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chal­lenges.

Against this back­drop, on May 27, Mikela Pan­day’s Pa­tri­ot­ic Front an­nounced open nom­i­na­tions, fu­elling spec­u­la­tion about po­ten­tial al­liances with oth­er op­po­si­tion par­ties. By the end of the month, she dis­pelled ru­mours that she was join­ing Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic slate.

Re­li­gious ten­sion

over Is­rael

Mean­while, re­li­gious ten­sions arose as Mus­lim groups ex­am­ined the Gov­ern­ment’s for­eign pol­i­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly its ties with Is­rael. On May 5, the Is­lam­ic Mis­sion­ar­ies Guild Is­lam­ic Cen­tre at Kel­ly Vil­lage, Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Im­ti­az Mo­hammed and oth­er Mus­lims urged the Gov­ern­ment to sev­er all eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic ties with Is­rael to co­in­cide with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­cent of­fi­cial recog­ni­tion of Pales­tine as a state, a de­ci­sion which was made in con­junc­tion with oth­er Cari­com na­tions.

As the month pro­gressed, Mus­lim groups with­drew sup­port for busi­ness­es af­fil­i­at­ed with the ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The month end­ed with the sedi­tion charges against Cana­di­an YouTu­ber Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es, spark­ing de­bates about free­dom of speech.

Hugh­es was ar­rest­ed af­ter pub­lish­ing a video in which he in­ter­viewed an al­leged gang mem­ber and his af­fil­i­ates.

Re­flec­tions of May

As the coun­try grap­pled with the chal­lenges of May 2024, cit­i­zens re­flect­ed on the im­por­tance of gov­er­nance and ac­count­abil­i­ty, pub­lic safe­ty, and eco­nom­ic pres­sure. The month marked tur­moil in the econ­o­my, ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the tragedies of crime. How­ev­er, it was al­so a pe­ri­od of trans­for­ma­tion with the es­tab­lish­ment of the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty. The most press­ing is­sue for the month seemed to be vi­o­lent crime and ris­ing pover­ty.