The glob­al sce­nario, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s con­tin­u­ing dra­mas, stopped cy­cling in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions mo­men­tar­i­ly on Wednes­day, af­ter the rare seis­mic dou­blet earth­quakes shat­tered Venezuela—and ter­ri­to­ries unit­ed in sol­i­dar­i­ty, con­do­lences and aid of­fers to the strick­en coun­try.

Com­plaints, con­cerns and clash­es were shelved in that mo­ment. Even for Guyana and T&T’s gov­ern­ments, where some du­els with Venezuela have been harsh.

The ter­ri­ble con­se­quences of 7.2 and 7.5 mag­ni­tude ‘quakes on a coun­try which has al­ready been seared by so many is­sues, lent op­por­tu­ni­ty for big­ger spir­it—and true lead­er­ship—to pre­vail. For T&T, whose mes­sage of sup­port came im­me­di­ate­ly Wednes­day—even mi­nus “big up” as Guyana re­ceived from act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez—it’s a chance to re­in­force a ba­sic cre­den­tial of lead­er­ship: com­rade­ship in cri­sis.

That re­gion­al qual­i­ty will be seen when Venezuela’s cri­sis is ex­pect­ed to be among items at next week­end’s 51st Cari­com con­fer­ence in St Lu­cia. An op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T to strength­en frayed fra­ter­nal bonds re­gion­al­ly and now car­ry­ing added im­pe­tus for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to at­tend.

While a de­ci­sion is in the works, it would be the mo­ment to step up, aid­ed by the light her Gov­ern­ment’s re­ceived on sev­er­al counts.

Ris­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al cir­cles with the US Shield of the Amer­i­c­as mem­ber­ship. Win­ning a Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil seat with Cari­com and oth­ers’ sup­port. Ris­ing above Venezuela’s “per­sona non gra­ta” la­bel to aid our clos­est neigh­bour with sup­plies, the de­par­ture date of which is be­ing worked out.

At­tract­ing fur­ther en­er­gy in­vest­ment. Im­proved rat­ing agency nods. Ex­pand­ing T&T’s pro­file over­seas at the OPEC Fund De­vel­op­ment Fo­rum and OAS’ con­fer­ence.

While Per­sad-Bisses­sar has stuck to her ob­jec­tions on Cari­com lead­ers’ reap­point­ment of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett, and warned T&T won’t recog­nise Bar­nett af­ter the Au­gust end of her tenure, Cari­com lead­ers’ May 8 vir­tu­al meet­ing, which the PM didn’t at­tend, closed the dis­cus­sion on the is­sue, main­tain­ing the reap­point­ment.

Cari­com con­fer­ence-eve tim­ing of Pro­fes­sor Ra­jen­dra Ram­lo­gan’s le­gal opin­ion that it was a “con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly de­fec­tive” reap­point­ment with room for chal­lenge, has re­freshed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s po­si­tion. It’s ahead whether this takes things in a new di­rec­tion (as some hope) with pe­rusal of the opin­ion by any le­gal ex­pert(s), fu­elling re­vival of her con­cerns. How­ev­er, af­ter the lead­ers’ May meet­ing, the PM stressed her points, ruled out any le­gal chal­lenge of the mat­ter at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice and left it at de­clar­ing that Cari­com could “ex­pel T&T if it want­ed.”

More im­por­tant­ly, T&T’s pres­ence at Cari­com’s need­ed, con­sid­er­ing its chair­man­ship of Cari­com’s Se­cu­ri­ty com­mit­tee.

On home turf, the UK’s re­port on T&T’s gangs—the lat­est as­sess­ment of lo­cal se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges—and Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s word of US Navy SEAL de­ploy­ment, sig­nals the depth of pri­or­i­ties, and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s ca­pa­bil­i­ty on it.

In­deed, SEALs, a famed com­po­nent of the US Naval Spe­cial War­fare Com­mand, re­flects Gov­ern­ment’s height­ened state of war on crime dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, which has as­sist­ed au­thor­i­ties’ op­er­a­tions on the coun­try’s top prob­lem, which the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress vowed to at­tack.

Gov­ern­ment, with in­creased “Promis­es Made ... Kept ” boasts re­veal­ing its con­tin­u­ous check of “ground” tem­per­a­ture, would cer­tain­ly have not­ed Sir Keir Starmer re­signed as British PM due to com­bined fac­tors—in­clud­ing bro­ken promis­es, pol­i­cy flip-flops and con­tro­ver­sial mis­steps.

Af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s omi­nous ad­dress on the so-called “one per cent” and al­leged links with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, in the cur­rent head­line-mak­ing po­lice mat­ter in­volv­ing a busi­ness­man and his wife, PNM PRO Faris Al-Rawi (a for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and min­is­ter) is re­port­ed as among the cou­ple’s le­gal team. Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ny Beck­les, mark­ing one year in the post to­mor­row—and whose de­meanour has tough­ened—is ral­ly­ing with the chal­lenges. So far.

Thurs­day’s Mara­bel­la meet­ing sought dam­age con­trol re­gard­ing the di­vi­sion be­tween San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning and con­stituen­cy chair­man Pa­tri­cia Alex­is. Both, present at the meet­ing, heard Beck­les (and chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ point­ed mes­sages: time for bick­er­ing’s over, set aside dif­fer­ences, be­ing unit­ed is key if PNM has to re­turn to gov­er­nance.

UNC je­fes con­firm fol­low­ing the SFE is­sue and its po­ten­tial. It’s ahead whether Tues­day’s re­port of the Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus probe team on the is­sue seals the breach, be­comes a ref­er­en­dum on Beck­les’ lead­er­ship or marks a spot for Man­ning, whose Par­lia­ment state­ments Beck­les pos­i­tive­ly not­ed on Thurs­day.