“Ha­tred for the UNC, racism and prej­u­dice” are the mo­tives be­hind the threat by at least one union to protest out­side the homes of Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. At least that is the sug­ges­tion be­ing made by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath. The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress won al­most 60% of the votes cast in the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and over 63% of the elec­toral seats. That vic­to­ry came with the votes from mem­bers of many unions. It is doubt­ful that such love would have turned to hate in just over a year. Per­haps the mi­nor­i­ty 40% are the ones who are “work­ing in the shad­ows with the PNM to fu­el sep­a­ra­tion and seg­re­ga­tion,” ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter.

The homes of min­is­ters of the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment, Colm Im­bert, Ro­han Sinanan, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, and the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence when Dr Kei­th Row­ley held that of­fice, would have been pick­et­ed. Was that “ha­tred for the PNM” then?

Op­po­si­tion MP Ka­reem Mar­celle fol­lowed the min­is­ter’s hate de­tec­tion with his own when he said that the Gov­ern­ment was “wicked, evil, and racist” and that “they hate we.”

Dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary de­bate to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency, cur­rent At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who was al­so a PNM at­tor­ney gen­er­al, trained his guns on a cer­tain “1%” “gang.” The “1%” term is un­der­stood as a slur tar­get­ing per­sons of Syr­i­an and Lebanese ori­gin. This trig­gered dis­tress with­in this com­mu­ni­ty.

Ac­tivist and busi­ness­man Gary Aboud be­lieves that “they are pick­ing on Syr­ia-Lebanese and it is racism,” and busi­ness­man Pe­ter George in­di­cat­ed “a pro­found sense of dis­may.”

The Ra­hael Hold­ings Lim­it­ed re­cent­ly turned the sod on the $220 mil­lion Hilton Gar­den Inn & Con­ven­tion Cen­tre project with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. They are Trin­bag­on­ian in­vestors of Syr­i­an/Lebanese ori­gins un­der a UNC Gov­ern­ment. This com­mu­ni­ty played im­por­tant roles in pre­vi­ous UNC gov­ern­ments. Per­haps AG Je­re­mie would not have known this, be­ing well en­sconced in the PNM dur­ing those pe­ri­ods.

PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er ma­noeu­vred the nar­ra­tive away from dan­ger by say­ing that “the one per cent com­mu­ni­ty con­sists of per­sons of many eth­nic groups. It does not con­sist of a sin­gu­lar eth­nic group.” She fur­ther di­vert­ed the fire to “cur­rent and for­mer high-rank­ing of­fi­cials of lo­cal banks,” blam­ing them for our forex bleed. Dam­age con­trol well en­gaged.

The SoE has been ex­tend­ed for an­oth­er three months, with the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment hav­ing im­ple­ment­ed such for 75% of their term al­ready. I con­duct­ed an­oth­er rudi­men­ta­ry poll on so­cial me­dia and found that the ma­jor­i­ty of re­spon­dents sup­port­ed its ex­ten­sion, say­ing things like “I’m le­gal.” Sev­er­al al­so said, “It doesn’t both­er me.” I won­dered at that re­sponse.

Crimes are still hap­pen­ing. Are crim­i­nals al­so obliv­i­ous to the SoE? Af­ter the “Tall Boots” gang, I thought there would be an up­surge in gang busts and week­ly pho­tos of guns, drugs and mil­lions of dol­lars be­ing con­fis­cat­ed. Has the SoE out­lived its use­ful­ness, or, as some com­menters in­di­cat­ed, “it would have been worse” with­out it? So that’s it for Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, I guess. The Gov­ern­ment could al­so add “No-Protest Zones” around the homes of pub­lic of­fi­cials and save the “hate” rhetoric. Per­haps the Gov­ern­ment could bring back the ZOSO bill with amend­ments. Per­haps un­pre­dictabil­i­ty and ver­sa­til­i­ty on the part of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice will bring greater re­sults.

Ahead of to­day’s Mid-year Bud­get Re­view, the Fi­nance Bill 2026 was de­bat­ed in both Hous­es last week and cri­tiqued most close­ly in the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee. The re­quest­ed bud­get sup­ple­men­ta­tion of $2.93 bil­lion will push the 2026 na­tion­al bud­get to a to­tal of about $ 62 bil­lion. $2.83 bil­lion of that will be al­lo­cat­ed di­rect­ly to re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture to cov­er ma­jor salary in­creas­es and out­stand­ing wage com­mit­ments to 62,000 unionised pub­lic ser­vants. This sig­nif­i­cant seg­ment of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion al­so has rel­a­tives who will be re­lieved to re­ceive their new salaries and back­pay. Per­haps as many as 200,000 cit­i­zens will be di­rect­ly im­pact­ed. I am in­ter­est­ed in the im­pact of this eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause it ac­counts for al­most all of the bud­get sup­ple­men­ta­tion.

Re­gard­ing our most ten­u­ous but crit­i­cal pos­si­ble ex­ter­nal eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um has de­tect­ed no sig­nif­i­cant oil spill in the Gulf of Paria, and our lo­cal fish­er­folk have en­dorsed this find­ing. This is good news for our en­vi­ron­ment and our neigh­bours’. Does Venezuela have oth­er ver­i­fi­able ev­i­dence, or are they “gaslight­ing” us be­fore “gas deal­ing” with us? Re­gard­less, it is good that we are treat­ing their con­cerns. What does this mean for fu­ture ne­go­ti­a­tions and co­op­er­a­tion, though?

Twelve-year-old Stan­dard Four stu­dent Mer­cedes Layne is an­oth­er child added to the too-long list of trag­ic mur­ders in our his­to­ry. Her grand­fa­ther placed her in a “PH” taxi to take her home to her moth­er. She would nev­er ar­rive. The au­top­sy re­vealed blunt force trau­ma to the head. A “PH” taxi dri­ver was charged with her mur­der.

How can this type of trans­porta­tion be reg­u­larised and made safe, es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al ar­eas where re­li­able pub­lic trans­porta­tion is un­avail­able? Can a preda­tor de­cide to be­come a “PH” dri­ver just to cap­ture un­sus­pect­ing vic­tims? Have we be­come de­sen­si­tised to the loss of our na­tion’s in­no­cent chil­dren? Con­do­lence, tears and can­dle­light vig­ils don’t save lives. What can be done to keep our most vul­ner­a­ble away from dan­ger?