Ra­mona Ram­di­al

There seems to be a re­sis­tance to change, even though re­forms are need­ed ur­gent­ly. Why, when this Gov­ern­ment holds a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty in the Par­lia­ment to do so?

Last week, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne both filed sep­a­rate mo­tions of priv­i­lege re­gard­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims that two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors were so­lic­it­ing per­son­al favours in ex­change for their sup­port to pass the ZOSO bill. As it turned out, the Op­po­si­tion and in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors killed that bill and then the Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Mark killed their mo­tions.

Should the Prime Min­is­ter have re­vealed the names of the two sen­a­tors for sale? Isn’t it in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est that these oath break­ers should be thrown out of na­tion­al lead­er­ship? Per­haps she plans to keep them on a leash for their sup­port on fu­ture bills with the threat to ex­pose them then? Per­haps she wants to mud­dy the wa­ters for all nine and leave them to wal­low in it. In­still­ing doubt in­stead of build­ing pub­lic trust is an in­ter­est­ing move, but does it im­prove our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment?

Were the al­leged “Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)” Pres­i­dent’s sen­a­tors foiled by the al­leged “Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)” Sen­ate Pres­i­dent? Will sen­a­tors beg­ging for bribes be nor­malised? Should a Prime Min­is­ter “fire and for­get,” leav­ing the pub­lic to “fill in the blanks?” If so, con­fir­ma­tion bias will reign. PNM sup­port­ers will say that PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar lied, while UNC sup­port­ers will feel that more than just the two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are vul­ner­a­ble to in­duce­ment and maybe the oth­ers are “PNM” any­way. Can con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form help to de­liv­er bet­ter ac­count­abil­i­ty to our peo­ple?

On Feb­ru­ary 1, and on the ex­piry of the State of Emer­gency, a group of pro­test­ers gath­ered out­side the Red House call­ing for Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro “to go” due to his de­fence of the po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in the shoot­ing death of Joshua Sama­roo and paral­y­sis of his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, fol­low­ing a car chase.

Com­mis­sion­er Gue­var­ro has se­ri­ous prob­lems with his of­fi­cers’ use of the 1,200 body cams cur­rent­ly pos­sessed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS). They would have been ac­quired by a pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment and a TTPS head­ed by then CoP Gary Grif­fith.

The hard­ware was pur­chased with $3.6 mil­lion of tax­pay­er funds. Do they have ab­solute­ly no crime-fight­ing ap­pli­ca­tion? Is there an­oth­er plan for the ac­qui­si­tion of 3,000 more at a cost to the tax­pay­ers of $8,000 each, to a new to­tal of $24 mil­lion? What if those are found to be prob­lem­at­ic al­so and join the oth­er use­less 1,200 in the TTPS junk­yard? I doubt that this cost-cut­ting Gov­ern­ment will waste an ex­tra cent on this. They should di­rect the of­fi­cers to get val­ue for mon­ey from the body cams they al­ready have.

If the “al­lyuh wicked” la­dy could film the of­fi­cers with a $200 cam­era phone, I am cer­tain that the $3,000 body cams are at least as good. Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, in a re­cent judg­ment, en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to film of­fi­cers. Such record­ings were al­so en­dorsed by Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty di­rec­tor David West. Why the re­sis­tance to ben­e­fi­cial changes in the TTPS? More lead­er­ship in­er­tia?

The dam­age to the new­ly ac­quired Blue Wave Har­mo­ny mere days af­ter her maid­en voy­age to To­ba­go was dis­ap­point­ing. The en­gage­ment of a car­go barge re­place­ment re­minds me of sim­i­lar prob­lems un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment. Is there a bet­ter so­lu­tion to be found, or is this the best To­bag­o­ni­ans can hope for?

The PNM pounced, glee­ful­ly, on a new Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) pol­i­cy to in­crease the fees on the trans­fer of HDC prop­er­ty to heirs from $700 to five per cent of the pur­chase price of the unit and to 10 per cent for re­sale af­ter 10 years. The irony is that the PM warned vot­ers about an al­leged “PNM in­her­i­tance tax” when she was cam­paign­ing for GE2025.The PNM has la­belled this the “UNC’s in­her­i­tance tax.” Is this UNC Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ing PNM pol­i­cy?

In my col­umn of Oc­to­ber 7, 2025, ti­tled Bud­get ex­pec­ta­tions, I mused, “Don’t we have some of the best co­coa in the world? Why can’t we sell tonnes of gourmet choco­late?”

I was pleased to see that our Gov­ern­ment pushed to get our Trini­tario Co­coa trade­mark cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Now we have to dri­ve pro­duc­tion. How will we ex­ploit the de­mands of the haute cui­sine choco­latiers and Miche­lin 3-star restau­rants in the de­vel­oped world? How many hun­dreds of thou­sands of acres will be ded­i­cat­ed to Trini­tario Co­coa ex­port by the end of this year? I look for­ward to the con­stant up­dates on the ton­nage shipped and the bil­lions re­ceived.

So, what about ship­ping thou­sands of casks of Moru­ga Scor­pi­on Pep­per now? The po­lit­i­cal will can make it hap­pen.

Of course, we have to con­tin­ue to max­imise our well-es­tab­lished en­er­gy port­fo­lio. Hope­ful­ly, we will be able to ben­e­fit from En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal’s vis­it to the re­cent en­er­gy con­fer­ence in Goa, In­dia. He would have men­tioned in­ter­est from the In­dia Oil Cor­po­ra­tion, Re­liance In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed and To­tal En­er­gies In­dia.

With Pres­i­dent Naren­dra Mo­di’s vis­it to our coun­try last year and his re­cent di­a­logues with US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Ro­driguez, our Gov­ern­ment must see yet an­oth­er an­gle to pur­sue our en­er­gy in­ter­ests. If In­dia is go­ing to buy Venezue­lan oil in­stead of Russ­ian, why not re­fine it at our Point-a-Pierre re­fin­ery?

We just have to re­build a re­la­tion­ship with the new act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent and then we will guar­an­tee our good trade and en­er­gy re­la­tions with the US, In­dia and Venezuela.

Who will be the key peo­ple to suc­cess­ful­ly dri­ve this agen­da and get us in­to the big leagues?

There is forex to be earned.