There are a few pro­vi­sions in the new State of Emer­gency (SoE) pow­ers which are said to se­ri­ous­ly en­croach on per­son­al free­doms of in­di­vid­u­als be­yond what pre­vi­ous SoEs gave to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and his of­fi­cers.

With the joint at­tack by Is­rael and the Unit­ed States on Iran last Sat­ur­day, and an ex­pand­ing war rag­ing in the Mid­dle East now, we might for­get that a meet­ing of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com took place in St Kitts- Nevis last week.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol... our strate­gic in­ter­ven­tions are yield­ing the de­sired dis­rup­tive re­sults.”

Last week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar chose a rather cu­ri­ous way to raise the is­sue of broad­er stake­hold­er par­tic­i­pa­tion in Cari­com process­es. Since the St Kitts In­ter-Ses­sion­al, the fo­cus has con­se­quent­ly re­mained on what she con­sid­ered to be an ex­am­ple of re­gion­al, po­lit­i­cal mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion – the Brent Thomas af­fair.

What is the op­po­site of two? A lone­ly me, a lone­ly you. — Richard Wilbur, po­et and trans­la­tor (Mar 1, 1921-2017)

In May 2024, Trinidad and To­ba­go joined 141 oth­er coun­tries in for­mal­ly recog­nis­ing the State of Pales­tine, while ex­press­ing sup­port for a two-state so­lu­tion and the le­git­i­mate as­pi­ra­tions of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple.

A few hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s speech at the open­ing of the Cari­com sum­mit in St Kitts on Tues­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump de­liv­ered his State of the Union ad­dress in Wash­ing­ton. He praised Mar­co Ru­bio as a “great Sec­re­tary of State”, who “I think will go down as the best ever.”

The elec­tion of Don­ald Trump as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States has com­pli­cat­ed the geopol­i­tics and made the world a more in­se­cure place. He has wield­ed a wreck­ing ball to the glob­al trade or­der. He has uni­lat­er­al­ly ab­ro­gat­ed trade treaties, pre­fer­ring in­stead to use tar­iffs ei­ther to pun­ish or co­erce coun­tries in­to chang­ing their trad­ing re­la­tion­ships with the US. He has al­so brought dis­or­der to the glob­al se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments by threat­en­ing to in­vade Cana­da or to take con­trol of Green­land.

De­spite the neg­a­tive wake Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar left be­hind at Cari­com’s 50th con­fer­ence in St Kitts, her replies to Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ques­tions in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day were her­ald­ed by desk pound­ing ap­proval from her team.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s point­ed re­marks at the 50th Meet­ing of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment have ex­posed a widen­ing and trou­bling rift be­tween T&T and the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty. While she reaf­firmed that this coun­try re­mains “vest­ed” in Cari­com, her de­c­la­ra­tion that this coun­try will no longer bind it­self to the re­gion’s po­lit­i­cal ide­olo­gies, for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tions, or se­cu­ri­ty frame­works sig­nals a pro­found shift in tone—and per­haps in tra­jec­to­ry.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump's in­vi­ta­tion to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Guyanese Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali to at­tend his 'Shield of the Amer­i­c­as' sum­mit of pro-Amer­i­can lead­ers on March 7 is an ex­treme­ly sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment for T&T.

When the par­ents of an 11-year-old girl first al­lowed her ac­cess to so­cial me­dia, it seemed harm­less — a way to con­nect with friends and share fun­ny videos. With­in months, how­ev­er, sub­tle changes emerged.