I have writ­ten at least twice be­fore in this same col­umn that, ac­cord­ing to our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man had to have been mur­dered by no one two decades ago. Al­so, two decades ago, nine men ap­par­ent­ly did noth­ing wrong but still were “ma­li­cious­ly pros­e­cut­ed” and were award­ed $20 mil­lion from tax­pay­ers’ funds. The case file for this mat­ter dis­ap­peared and then reap­peared af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­mis­sioned in 2023, along with shame­ful pub­lic­i­ty.

“Amer­i­ca can just fly in and use its mil­i­tary base in Spain. No­body is go­ing to tell us not to use it.”

There are many sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween a mil­i­tary cam­paign and busi­ness man­age­ment. Both de­mand de­ci­sions amid un­cer­tain­ty in com­pet­i­tive mar­kets against ri­vals with lim­it­ed re­sources. Cor­po­rate strat­e­gy aligns or­gan­i­sa­tion­al goals with op­er­a­tional ex­e­cu­tion. War ob­jec­tives trans­late to strate­gic goals in busi­ness. A the­atre of op­er­a­tion is sim­i­lar to a mar­ket or in­dus­try, and in­tel­li­gence equals com­peti­tor mar­ket in­for­ma­tion.

Who vex loss. With those three words, de­liv­ered to a room full of Caribbean heads of gov­ern­ment in St Kitts last week, T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­tilled a geopo­lit­i­cal mo­ment in­to a Trinida­di­an proverb. If you are up­set by my choic­es, that is your prob­lem. I have made my cal­cu­la­tion and I am mov­ing on.

If Bar­ba­dos is Lit­tle Eng­land, then there’s no doubt in my mind that Trinidad is Lit­tle Amer­i­ca. iPhones, Star­bucks and KFC dom­i­nate while the youth fre­quent malls in their down­time just to sit around and chill. Now, whether or not this is a pos­i­tive state of af­fairs isn’t the top­ic du jour. Rather, I want to talk about one as­pect of Amer­i­can cul­ture which we im­port­ed and its im­pact on the blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired (BVI) com­mu­ni­ty. I re­fer, of course, to the Tri­ni dream, which is our take on the Amer­i­can one.

The theme for In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day to­mor­row, March 8, is: “Rights. Jus­tice. Ac­tion. For ALL Women and Girls.” An­tónio Guter­res, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the UN, has stat­ed that achiev­ing gen­der equal­i­ty and em­pow­er­ing women and girls is “the un­fin­ished busi­ness of our time, and the great­est hu­man rights chal­lenge in our world.”

On March 3, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar once again draped our na­tion in the suf­fo­cat­ing cloak of a State of Emer­gency. Bare­ly one month af­ter the pre­vi­ous SoE ex­pired on Jan­u­ary 31st, she rushed to sus­pend our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, cit­ing “cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence” of vague threats sup­pos­ed­ly em­a­nat­ing from the prison sys­tem—gang reprisals and mass shoot­ings planned from be­hind bars. No names. No dates. No spe­cif­ic plots. No ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed to the pop­u­la­tion. Noth­ing. Just the same tired, opaque phrase we have heard for years.

Every year, when we cel­e­brate In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, we see the me­dia high­light­ing suc­cess­ful women; women who are break­ing glass ceil­ings and im­pact­ing de­vel­op­ment in T&T.

I used to ac­com­pa­ny my grand­moth­er as a lit­tle boy to the mar­ket. Sun­day morn­ing mar­ket is a whole dif­fer­ent cul­ture and com­ing to­geth­er of our peo­ple. It was those mem­o­ries that spurred this week’s piece ...

They say it be­fore I check their blood pres­sure. Be­fore I re­view their blood tests. Be­fore I ask about sleep, stress, grief, work, hor­mones or the fact that they have not eat­en a qui­et meal in months.

What ap­pears when a leader is un­masked? Does the un­veil­ing re­veal a whole­some in­di­vid­ual who pos­sess­es au­then­tic com­pe­tence? Or does it ex­pose a ti­tle-de­pen­dent im­poster, mas­querad­ing un­der a pol­ished ve­neer of ex­per­tise? Both per­sonas are present in to­day’s world.

Every year on March 8th, the world comes to­geth­er to mark In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD)—a day of cel­e­bra­tion, ad­vo­ca­cy and com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing gen­der equal­i­ty and women’s rights.