Vox Pop­uli, Vox Dei. The peo­ple have spo­ken, and as the say­ing goes, the voice of the peo­ple is the voice of God. Now, you all know I am not a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, and I have no in­ten­tion of try­ing to be­come one. Still, I am a true pa­tri­ot, a son of the soil, Tri­ni to the bone, and hav­ing rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try at crick­et, as far as I am con­cerned, no­body from out­side can “bad mouth” Trinidad & To­ba­go. It’s like fam­i­ly—don’t speak ill of my fam­i­ly. I can do that, but not an out­sider. This in­tro is be­cause I will at­tempt, in my lay­man’s words, to come to terms with what hap­pened on the night of Mon­day, April 28, 2025.

First­ly, con­grat­u­la­tions to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) stal­warts; they ran a cam­paign that ap­peared to be fo­cused on is­sues that many con­stant­ly spoke about—crime, in­fla­tion, and for­eign ex­change short­ages, to name a few—and the la­dy her­self showed the kind of bel­ly I wish more West In­dies bats­men could show. She was writ­ten off po­lit­i­cal­ly not once (in 2015) but twice (again in 2020), but she found a lev­el of re­silience I am not sure she knew she even had. Her op­po­nents let fly a bar­rage of bounc­ers in­tim­i­dat­ing her, hu­mil­i­at­ing her stance, so that she ac­cu­mu­lat­ed more ducks than cen­turies with her fail­ures and all the mis­takes she made with her shot se­lec­tion; how­ev­er, the worst was to come as she was seem­ing­ly viewed as too old to stand up and take her right­ful place at the wick­et.

She proved them all wrong as her shot se­lec­tion was spot on, and she dealt with the bounc­ers. When she had to leave alone, she did it with ef­fi­cien­cy even more styl­ish than Court­ney Walsh, and more than ever, she made one and all re­alise that age is just a num­ber, and once you are per­form­ing, the se­lec­tors can­not re­tire you un­til you are ready to re­tire. I met the prime min­is­ter many years ago when she was this coun­try’s first fe­male at­tor­ney gen­er­al and a few times when she was this coun­try’s first fe­male prime min­is­ter, but to be hon­est, the on­ly thing I know of her is what I see on tele­vi­sion. Still, her enor­mous strength, courage, and re­silience have to be ad­mired and should serve as an in­spi­ra­tion for our young peo­ple.

What of her op­po­nents? Their game plan back­fired. I have al­ways been taught as a play­er and as a coach that you have to plan your strat­e­gy ear­ly, es­pe­cial­ly when you know the op­po­si­tion and what their strengths and weak­ness­es are, but you al­so need to play to your strengths and hope the op­po­si­tion can­not cap­i­talise on your weak­ness­es. In this case, the op­po­si­tion tried to play a sub­sti­tute in a po­si­tion and a role that he was not ac­cus­tomed to, and it back­fired tremen­dous­ly, as the spec­ta­tors were not at all hap­py with the sub­sti­tute, and from all ap­pear­ances, his team­mates did not seem par­tic­u­lar­ly hap­py with the sub­sti­tu­tion. It leaves me won­der­ing, did the orig­i­nal play­er feel he could not play the role, as the op­po­si­tion was find­ing fault af­ter fault in his style of play and was re­mind­ing the spec­ta­tors not to be fooled by the new strat­e­gy (chap­ter), as it was the same old style of play?

What baf­fled me about the op­po­si­tion? They dropped some play­ers in key po­si­tions and brought in a new play­er and then made some oth­er changes with some bet­ter-per­form­ing play­ers, but then they played no prac­tice match­es when in fact they could have played some games for about 4 to 5 months un­til they were ready for the big game lat­er on in the year. But, again, in my hum­ble view, the spec­ta­tors want­ed to analyse if the changes would have been ef­fec­tive, but it was an­oth­er mis­take, as no one could have analysed the new strat­e­gy. Again, I keep hear­ing the team was not hap­py with the sub­sti­tute.

What about the lit­tle team from an­oth­er di­vi­sion com­ing up against the cham­pi­ons in the sis­ter isle? A true David vs Go­liath sto­ry, and I must ad­mit, To­ba­go, I salute you. You were not afraid to take some harsh de­ci­sions, but that start­ed a while ago, and it con­tin­ued. Far­ley Au­gus­tine and his team must be do­ing some­thing right for the peo­ple of To­ba­go; the signs were there for all to see, but maybe Go­liath thought that he could with­stand one last blow from David, but the blow was too pow­er­ful for his weak body, and so he top­pled over in the sis­ter isle like a man­go tree that bore no more fruit.

Now, the re­al cham­pi­onship will be­gin. I have not heard any­thing on the plat­form from any of the teams about what they in­tend to do to help sport in the coun­try. What are they go­ing to do to as­sist the rel­e­vant sport­ing as­so­ci­a­tions and bod­ies? We have al­ways boast­ed in this coun­try about the amount of tal­ent our young­sters pos­sess, but that tal­ent has to be har­nessed, and all the sport­ing bod­ies have de­vel­op­ment plans to help the young­sters and to as­sist the rel­e­vant sport.

Sport is one way to keep the youths off the streets and the block, and think about it: the one thing that unites a na­tion is sport, es­pe­cial­ly when the na­tion­al teams are do­ing well.

The coun­try is lack­ing in ba­sic fa­cil­i­ties like grounds, in­door fa­cil­i­ties, etc, and some of the sta­di­ums are a dis­grace. Has any­one tak­en a trip down to the Man­nie Ramjohn Sta­di­um late­ly? It looks like a di­lap­i­dat­ed struc­ture; even the build­ings in Juras­sic Park looked bet­ter af­ter a di­nosaur at­tack.

I had a look at Ir­win Park re­cent­ly; it is a sad sight. I re­mem­ber do­ing a Sec­ondary Schools Foot­ball League open­ing game dou­ble­head­er there a few years ago, and to­day I would ad­vise any­one who owns a dog not to let them run around Ir­win Park; they could be in­jured by the old nails, etc, that could be in the ground. One good thing: Ir­win Park is in Siparia, so I ex­pect good things to hap­pen to Ir­win Park, but please, Madam Prime Min­is­ter, do not for­get the rest of the coun­try’s fa­cil­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ty grounds are bad­ly lack­ing; we need to get the youths ac­tive again. I know there are umpteen things on the agen­da, but please, please, please give sport and our youth a chance and al­low them to live again.

Con­grat­u­la­tions again, UNC, on a re­mark­able vic­to­ry at the polls. May you al­ways put coun­try be­fore par­ty, and may God bless Trinidad & To­ba­go.

Ed­i­tor’s note:

The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.