Politi­cians claim that Trinidad and To­ba­go is hard to gov­ern due to its racial di­ver­si­ty and lack of una­nim­i­ty. Yet, democ­ra­cies every­where re­quire slow, con­sen­sus-dri­ven de­ci­sion-mak­ing to bal­ance in­ter­ests. Cit­i­zens are en­ti­tled to dif­fer­ing opin­ions and to sen­si­ble mech­a­nisms to re­solve these dif­fer­ences.

It is in­evitable that there will be dif­fer­ent opin­ions and dis­agree­ments. These will oc­cur in Par­lia­ment and in the coun­try at large, and in­deed with­in po­lit­i­cal par­ties. What mat­ters is how those dis­agree­ments are re­solved. Lead­ers are re­spon­si­ble for set­ting the tone of the de­bate and, by so do­ing, set an ex­am­ple for oth­ers with­in the par­ty and the coun­try. In this re­gard, lead­ers are ex­em­plars with the ca­pac­i­ty for rea­soned elab­o­ra­tion in dis­sem­i­nat­ing these ar­gu­ments. What is said and how it is said are of the ut­most im­por­tance.

In Ju­ly 2025, a Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor ques­tioned the im­par­tial­i­ty of two in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors dur­ing a de­bate on the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill. This led to a crit­i­cism of the role of in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. In the week lead­ing up to the de­bate in the Sen­ate on the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment) Bill, 2026, the Prime Min­is­ter dou­bled down on her crit­i­cism of the in­de­pen­dents, say­ing they were ap­point­ed be­cause they are “bootlick­ers and brown-nosers.” How­ev­er, in fair­ness to the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, they were pre­pared to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment-spon­sored bill if cer­tain amend­ments were made. How­ev­er, none of the pro­posed amend­ments was ac­cept­ed. Ac­cord­ing­ly, the Bill was not sup­port­ed by the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

Fur­ther­more, this is not the first time that the in­de­pen­dents have not sup­port­ed a gov­ern­ment bill. Every gov­ern­ment, whether UNC or PNM, has pre­sent­ed bills that have failed when in­de­pen­dents have not agreed.

Sub­se­quent­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter al­leged that the two in­de­pen­dents ap­proached a se­nior Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor seek­ing per­son­al favours to se­cure their sup­port for the Bill, but has re­fused to iden­ti­fy the per­sons.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, one of the longest-serv­ing par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, has al­so served as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs, and is a se­nior coun­sel. Giv­en this ex­ten­sive back­ground, we can rea­son­ably ex­pect her to be fa­mil­iar with the re­quired stan­dard of proof and the prin­ci­ple that the bur­den of proof lies with the ac­cuser. With­out such proof, these state­ments are mere al­le­ga­tions that risk dis­cred­it­ing Par­lia­ment and may sug­gest that any of the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors is im­pli­cat­ed.

This could be seen to bring every in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor in­to pub­lic ridicule and odi­um. It could be ar­gued that this al­so forms part of a dis­turb­ing pat­tern by Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to launch scathing ad hominem at­tacks on any­one who does not agree with their po­si­tion, be it sup­port­ing US ex­tra­ju­di­cial ac­tions or oth­er­wise. In De­cem­ber, the Prime Min­is­ter la­belled the coun­try a “law­less dump” be­cause of the en­ti­tled at­ti­tudes of some cit­i­zens who be­lieve they can do what­ev­er they want while in­con­ve­nienc­ing oth­ers with­out con­se­quences. How­ev­er, for law­less­ness to be re­duced, it re­quires a con­cert­ed ef­fort, in­clud­ing by those in po­si­tions of lead­er­ship who must set the ap­pro­pri­ate ex­am­ple.

This coun­try faces ex­is­ten­tial eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, which are com­pli­cat­ed by geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments. To ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress these ex­ter­nal chal­lenges, its lead­er­ship must al­so be fo­cused on find­ing vi­able op­tions while en­sur­ing that the cit­i­zens un­der­stand the chal­lenges and build con­sen­sus on the mea­sures to over­come these chal­lenges. Emp­ty rhetoric dis­tracts from this se­ri­ous busi­ness.