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.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has used the op­por­tu­ni­ty of the 50th Cari­com Sum­mit to re­it­er­ate her Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion in sup­port of the in­ter­ven­tion of the Unit­ed States in the Caribbean Sea, al­leged­ly against drug traf­fick­ing.

Far­ley Au­gus­tine swept the polls in the last To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tion and has es­tab­lished au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go as a pri­or­i­ty in his role as Chief Sec­re­tary.

As Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at­tends the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in St Kitts and Nevis this week, her pres­ence comes un­der the shad­ow of a com­plex and con­tro­ver­sial chap­ter in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy.

Al­most to the day, 44 years ago, late prime min­is­ter George Cham­bers pro­claimed as a post-Car­ni­val in­struc­tion to the na­tion: “Fete over, back to work!”

Around 11 am Car­ni­val Tues­day morn­ing, I re­alised that Car­ni­val 2026 was over. We had seen all the bands we want­ed to see. K2K, Lost Tribe and All Stars showed that all was not dead, there was some hope, there al­ways is. Shake­speare said of Cleopa­tra: “Age can­not with­er her, nor cus­tom stale/Her in­fi­nite va­ri­ety.” It’s the same with us and our cul­ture, “in­fi­nite va­ri­ety.” As soon as you think the Car­ni­val is over, along comes some­one try­ing a new thing, shout­ing out “Come leh we go!”

As Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar heads to the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in St Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and To­ba­go finds it­self at a defin­ing mo­ment in its re­gion­al jour­ney. The theme “Be­yond Words: Ac­tion To­day for a Thriv­ing, Sus­tain­able Cari­com,” must mark a recom­mit­ment to uni­ty at a time when uni­ty is un­der strain.

San­skrit is con­sid­ered one of the world’s old­est lan­guages, orig­i­nat­ing in the 2nd mil­len­ni­um BCE. San­skrit can be cat­e­gorised in­to the Vedic and clas­si­cal.

The time is right for an in­de­pen­dent analy­sis of the mul­ti­ple tax­es im­posed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Gov­ern­ment.

As the oil boom waned, for­mer prime min­is­ter George Cham­bers ad­mon­ished cit­i­zens, “Fete over, back to work” at the end of the 1982 car­ni­val sea­son. It was an ur­gent call to boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and eco­nom­ic out­put to counter the loom­ing down­turn. The eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy frame­work did not change, and the sharp fall in en­er­gy prices re­sult­ed in a de­pres­sion and a pro­longed pe­ri­od of aus­ter­i­ty.

We all have opin­ions about ca­lyp­so, which is un­ques­tion­ably one of our most trea­sured art forms. It be­comes mem­o­rable, pul­sat­ing po­et­ry when writ­ten and per­formed with the skill that, in the words of the ge­nius Rud­der, “could make a politi­cian cringe.”

Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate leader Dar­rell Al­la­har’s ec­sta­t­ic ex­pres­sion amid a sea of spec­ta­tors dur­ing Car­ni­val Fla­va Fri­day at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah would like­ly have been re­peat­ed on Ash Wednes­day, when T&T was re­moved from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s black­li­s­tand af­ter Gov­ern­ment deemed Car­ni­val 2026 suc­cess­ful.