I sup­port the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (SO) Bill, 2026. It presents a crime-fight­ing frame­work to re­place the States of Emer­gency we lived un­der for 15 of the last 20 months.

Many re­peat­ed that “as a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, the SoE didn’t af­fect me.” I was not per­son­al­ly in­con­ve­nienced by the ex­tra pow­ers grant­ed to the pro­tec­tive ser­vices dur­ing these SoEs, but I have nev­er for­got­ten our gov­ern­ment’s 2011 ex­pe­ri­ence and its af­ter­math.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­di­cat­ed that “Chal­lenges may not be very suc­cess­ful” giv­en how the SoE reg­u­la­tions were draft­ed. That sug­gests that the pub­lic purse should be pro­tect­ed.

The Op­po­si­tion would ques­tion if the rights of ag­griev­ed in­di­vid­u­als to ju­di­cial re­view were cur­tailed. The Gov­ern­ment would ques­tion the ac­tiv­i­ties of those af­fect­ed. Were they “law-abid­ing”?

The pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion of this bill, “The Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures) Bill, 2026,” failed in the Sen­ate ear­li­er this year be­cause the Gov­ern­ment re­fused to ac­cept 106 amend­ments pro­posed by In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, who ar­gued the bill gave sweep­ing pow­ers to politi­cians and lacked ad­e­quate hu­man rights safe­guards.

Some of the bill’s pro­vi­sions en­croached on fun­da­men­tal con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, trig­ger­ing a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty re­quire­ment in the Sen­ate for pas­sage.

In­de­pen­dent and Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors blocked it over con­cerns about war­rant­less en­tries, the po­ten­tial mil­i­tari­sa­tion of lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, and the Prime Min­is­ter gain­ing per­son­al con­trol over the armed forces via the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

The new SO Bill seems much more in­formed than its pre­de­ces­sor and re­quires a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty, so it will cer­tain­ly be­come law soon.

In it, the Pres­i­dent will de­ter­mine whether a “closed area” should be de­clared with­in any of the sev­en iden­ti­fied for­mal polic­ing dis­tricts, rather than the pre­vi­ous des­ig­na­tions, which were crit­i­cised as ar­bi­trary or “tar­get­ing” cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties.

Restor­ing the TTPS as the pri­ma­ry pro­tec­tive ser­vice would re­duce the fear of mar­tial law. The two-year sun­set al­so in­tro­duces a sense of tem­po­rari­ness that may pro­mote the im­pres­sion that the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus ex­pects crime-fight­ing suc­cess.

The Prime Min­is­ter spoke of “mak­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go safe again,” a la US Pres­i­dent Trump’s “great again” re­frain.

Can we “bring back the old time days” of no SOs and no SOEs?

Per­haps the con­clu­sion of the SoE alone will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on our in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty stand­ing. Neg­a­tive trav­el ad­vi­sories from for­eign gov­ern­ments should ease.

The Op­po­si­tion seems un­will­ing to sup­port this bill in any form, but I hope that the coun­try comes first and that a bi­par­ti­san ap­proach is tak­en to the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the law-abid­ing.

Who is re­spon­si­ble for last week’s “reshuf­fle” ru­mours along with pro­mos for fu­ture UNC po­lit­i­cal lead­ers? The PNM?

Pos­si­bly the UNC is float­ing in­fo for feed­back?

The Gazette al­so no­ti­fied that Min­is­ter Sobers was act­ing En­er­gy Min­is­ter as of Sep­tem­ber 13, but that was un­nec­es­sary, giv­en that the sub­stan­tive En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, was in the coun­try and very ac­tive.

The list would have giv­en some pause, but I found it laugh­able.

A reshuf­fle be­fore a Bud­get made no sense, since it would dis­ad­van­tage Min­is­ters with new port­fo­lios in the de­bate and at SFC.

It would sab­o­tage ac­count­ing for the work done over the past fis­cal year. The Op­po­si­tion would have rel­ished that.

PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er dis­pelled those ru­mours but ad­mit­ted there was “room for im­prove­ment”.

I must agree with her eval­u­a­tion, but I am will­ing to give glow­ing en­dorse­ments for the Min­is­ter/s who pave the ter­ri­ble roads or even patch the pot­holes in my com­mu­ni­ty.

A post-Bud­get reshuf­fle could very well be a bril­liant strat­e­gy with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions (LGE) 2027 in mind.

If the de­liv­ery min­istries are not “de­liv­er­ing” then new min­is­te­r­i­al as­sign­ments could very well grease the wheels.

Could it buy the gov­ern­ment a bit more time to sat­is­fy the ever-in­creas­ing de­mands of the pop­u­la­tion ahead of LGE 2027?

The promise of en­er­gy earn­ings in 2027 will be a ma­jor dri­ver of the LGE 2027 cam­paign for the UNC, with the PNM seek­ing to claim cred­it for any such ad­vances.

A lot of sig­nif­i­cant events can hap­pen un­til then, though.

One such is the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed meet­ing be­tween PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez at UN­GA this week.

Our Prime Min­is­ter’s pre­view with her procla­ma­tion of love for her is in­tel­li­gent emo­tive­ness.

US Pres­i­dent Trump will al­so meet Pres­i­dent Ro­driguez for the first time since the regime change.

He al­so set the stage for that meet­ing by re­mov­ing Venezuela from the US list of coun­tries that have failed to demon­stra­bly com­bat il­le­gal drug traf­fick­ing. Venezuela was on that list for over 22 years.

One would won­der what the great­est dif­fer­ence in the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment over the past two decades is: It is the first time that nei­ther Hugo Chavez nor his dis­ci­ple, Nicolás Maduro, has been in pow­er.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion out­lined in­creased se­cu­ri­ty and counter-nar­cotics co­op­er­a­tion with Venezuela’s in­ter­im gov­ern­ment un­der Del­cy Ro­dríguez, but the US forces’ ouster of the Maduro regime, along with their de­struc­tion of nar­coter­ror­ist ma­rine ves­sels, would have been the ma­jor fac­tors in eras­ing Venezuela from the list.

Re­gard­less, the over­tures made ahead of the Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent’s at­ten­dance at UN­GA 81 sug­gest that she will be the belle of the ball.

Sit­ting on the world’s largest proven oil and a top ten proven nat­ur­al gas re­serves will do that.