Ra­mona Ram­di­al

At this writ­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is at the UN Head­quar­ters in New York City.

Her speech at the 80th ses­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA 80) sought to dis­pel the no­tion that “the Caribbean is a zone of peace.”

She re­ferred to the high mur­der rates through­out Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean while sin­gling out our na­tion’s 2024 mur­der rate of 623.

She opined that US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s com­ments on the ef­fects of “re­lent­less nar­co and hu­man traf­fick­ing, or­gan­ised crime and il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion are cor­rect.”

She out­lined how these chal­lenge small is­land states, ours in par­tic­u­lar. As such, she ex­pressed grat­i­tude for “the US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the South­ern Caribbean.”

The Prime Min­is­ter spoke of the dele­te­ri­ous im­pacts of the “drug car­tels” and of the ne­ces­si­ty of “fight­ing fire with fire.”

She al­so rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed sup­port for US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, be­fore com­ment­ing that “gangs could re­place gov­ern­ments” in a ref­er­ence to the Hait­ian cri­sis.

How­ev­er, does our Prime Min­is­ter share Sec­re­tary Ru­bio’s (and Pres­i­dent Trump’s) be­lief that Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro is a gang leader?

US forces have de­stroyed at least three boats that de­part­ed from Venezuela in the past few weeks. The US gov­ern­ment is adamant that the ves­sels were in­volved in nar­co-ter­ror­ism.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the gov­ern­ments of the two Caribbean na­tions clos­est to these events (Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana) have de­clared their sup­port for the ac­tions of the US armed forces.

The PM of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gon­za­les, has been the most ag­gres­sive­ly op­posed to the pres­ence of the US mil­i­tary as­sets and their ac­tiv­i­ties.

Oth­er Cari­com heads of state have been more mea­sured in their state­ments while lean­ing to­wards restor­ing the Caribbean as a “re­gion of peace.”

In the last few days, Venezue­lan De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no Lopez claimed that 60 mil­i­tary units were be­ing de­ployed in the state of Su­cre to com­bat fu­el and arms smug­gling and hu­man traf­fick­ing.

He al­so men­tioned ter­ror­ist and drug traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. If both the Amer­i­can and Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties are true to their pub­lic po­si­tions, there would be no acts of ag­gres­sion, and our coun­try would ben­e­fit from all sides tar­get­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ments. It would be a nice sur­prise if the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment would re­ward our Gov­ern­ment’s cheer­lead­ing with some sup­port for our econ­o­my, though.

Mean­while, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is grant­i­ng our coun­try TT$94 mil­lion to pur­sue “Eco­nom­ic and Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion.”

We look for­ward to news of more in­vest­ments as PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­tin­ues to meet oth­er world lead­ers at UN­GA 80.

While PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar makes her first vis­it abroad since the UNC won GE2025, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy leader Jear­lean John is our act­ing Prime Min­is­ter.

This should not have been a sur­prise. The most ex­pe­ri­enced and se­nior mem­bers of the UNC, which in­clude the oth­er two DPLs, Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Min­is­ter David Lee, along with UNC chair­man Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo, have been elect­ed by the UNC mem­ber­ship.

If noth­ing else, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar would have learnt from for­mer PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley not to foist an un­elect­ed leader on her par­ty’s mem­ber­ship and the na­tion.

Se­lect­ing Jear­lean John, a pow­er­ful woman of Afro-To­bag­on­ian de­scent, as act­ing PM of a UNC Gov­ern­ment, was an in­tel­li­gent move by the sub­stan­tive Prime Min­is­ter.

Per­haps she will ro­tate her ros­ter when­ev­er she trav­els.

UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo, as Fi­nance Min­is­ter, ful­ly fo­cused on his first Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, would be un­con­cerned about act­ing as prime min­is­ter but wor­ried about Stan­dard & Poor’s lat­est glob­al rat­ings.

Our eco­nom­ic out­look has de­clined from ‘sta­ble’ to ‘neg­a­tive’, even while our in­vest­ment grade rat­ing of BBB- has been af­firmed. Will this stark re­al­i­ty tem­per those “10 per cent” dreams? Will Min­is­ter Tan­coo roll out re­al­is­tic plans to ig­nite di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship? Can our SMEs be uni­fied in some way to cre­ate a na­tive hive mind in pur­suit of col­lec­tive ad­vance­ment? Have we at­tract­ed fur­ther in­vest­ments in the oil and gas sec­tors? Will there be a role for the prof­itable home­grown con­glom­er­ates in ad­vis­ing the Gov­ern­ment on how our econ­o­my can grow? Will we see a flood of forex re­mit­tances in the new fis­cal year?

As we hope and pray for in­creas­es in our coun­try’s rev­enue, the snuff­ing out of a bright light snapped us back to re­al­i­ty.

Twelve-year-old Mari­ah Seenath, of “Friend­ship” Vil­lage, Ste Madeleine, was blud­geoned to death. We heard that this young stu­dent, of San Fer­nan­do East Sec­ondary, held the par­tic­u­lar in­ter­ests of foot­ball and the­atre arts.

This is an­oth­er ter­ri­ble re­minder that we can­not let our chil­dren out of our sight. We have to en­sure that they are safe­ly con­veyed from place to place.

There could be mon­sters lurk­ing in plain day­light. What about those fam­i­lies who do not have the time and/or mon­ey to pick up and drop their chil­dren to school? Or hire trans­porta­tion? Can we trust that our chil­dren could walk through a “track” and come out safe­ly on the oth­er side? This is yet an­oth­er deep blow dealt to our Trin­bag­on­ian psy­che.

It has been said that “the true mea­sure of any so­ci­ety can be found in how it treats its most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers.”

As pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments have failed to di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my, many fam­i­lies have con­tin­ued to strug­gle to make ends meet, and many chil­dren re­main at risk.

Will we soon see a new eco­nom­ic dawn that will have tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to those who most need them?