The truth, the whole truth and noth­ing but the truth.

Re­gard­less of the pol­i­tics - and don’t be fooled, there is pol­i­tics in every sin­gle as­pect of life. It is naive to go through life un­mind­ful of the im­pact of pol­i­tics. How­ev­er, that is not to say that pol­i­tics should be the be-all and end-all. But its im­pact must be as­sessed, un­der­stood and ac­knowl­edged, be that im­pact neg­a­tive or pos­i­tive. And es­pe­cial­ly when in lead­er­ship - pay­ing full at­ten­tion as the “dev­il” is al­ways in the de­tails.

In this con­text, the re­cent de­ci­sion by the UK Gov­ern­ment to im­pose visa re­quire­ments on T&T cit­i­zens will have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on sports in T&T. For sure, it will have a fi­nan­cial im­pact but the UK au­thor­i­ties don’t care. Their so­lu­tion for a loop­hole in their law that cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for an in­crease in T&T cit­i­zens seek­ing asy­lum sta­tus is to im­pose on T&T the “ham­mer” of “Pe­ter pay for Paul “.

From March 11-16, T&T cre­at­ed his­to­ry as the first coun­try to kick off the King’s Ba­ton Re­lay for the Com­mon­wealth Games, which is be­ing held in Glas­gow, Scot­land, from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 2, 2026. The irony would be lost on those who con­tin­ue to adopt the po­si­tion that sport and pol­i­tics don’t and shouldn’t mix.

In re­cent days, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said the Unit­ed King­dom did not dis­cuss its de­ci­sion to im­pose a visa on T&T cit­i­zens with the min­istry be­fore mak­ing the de­ci­sion, which took im­me­di­ate ef­fect, now re­quires all T&T cit­i­zens to ap­ply for a visa be­fore trav­el­ling to or tran­sit­ing through the UK, end­ing decades of visa-free trav­el be­tween the two coun­tries.

Browne said the min­istry was told about it on March 10, two days be­fore High Com­mis­sion­er Jon Dean an­nounced the UK’s de­ci­sion to im­pose an im­me­di­ate visa re­quire­ment for T&T na­tion­als.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Browne on Feb­ru­ary 10, he fa­cil­i­tat­ed a meet­ing with the UK High Com­mis­sion­er, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, T&T’s Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer, and two of­fi­cers from the Home Of­fice.

“One of the top­ics dis­cussed was the asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tion process and their ob­ser­va­tion that there was an in­crease of ap­pli­cants who ar­rived from T&T. There was no dis­cus­sion of prospec­tive visa im­po­si­tion.

In oth­er words, the de­ci­sion of the UK Gov­ern­ment “came like a thief in the night”. Cer­tain­ly not a way to treat with T&T, if that is we are seen as equals but then again, what should we ac­cept from our past colo­nial mas­ters - to be treat­ed as equals?

But, sports and pol­i­tics shouldn’t mix, so the Kings Ba­ton Re­lay is here and we cel­e­brate with pride the ho­n­our and priv­i­lege of be­ing se­lect­ed as the first na­tion to host it.

For many in­volved in sport, the gate­way to Eu­rope, Asia, Africa, Mid­dle East is via the UK, in par­tic­u­lar, those who may not have a US Visa or have chal­lenges ob­tain­ing a US Visa.

But, that many in T&T sport are now caught “be­tween a rock and a hard place” is not a con­cern of the UK Gov­ern­ment. A sober re­minder of T&T’s place in the World or­der.

By the way, the val­ues of the Com­mon­wealth Games Fed­er­a­tion, now re­brand­ed as Com­mon­wealth Sport are: Hu­man­i­ty, Equal­i­ty, Des­tiny. Yep! Equal­i­ty is a core val­ue.

Hey! Re­mem­ber, sports and pol­i­tics don’t mix.

In oth­er news: This week, sev­en can­di­dates will com­pete in the elec­tion for the pres­i­den­cy of the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) at the 144th IOC Ses­sion held from March 18-21 in Greece.