Ra­mona Ram­di­al

In my col­umn of Au­gust 4, “The vul­ner­a­ble and the vil­lains,” as a for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, I called for the re-es­tab­lish­ment of that min­istry (or even an ef­fec­tive man­i­fes­ta­tion) for our most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens.

I have heard sim­i­lar calls from oth­er quar­ters fol­low­ing the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s (TSC) rev­e­la­tions that there were 16 cas­es of stu­dent sex­u­al abuse al­leged­ly per­pe­trat­ed by their teach­ers, in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

Worse, sup­pos­ed­ly these vi­o­la­tions are be­fore the TSC for teacher mis­con­duct, but are not backed up by T&T Po­lice Ser­vice charges un­der the Sex­u­al Of­fences and Chil­dren Act!

The min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for “Chil­dren’s Af­fairs” should have been all over this.

Imag­ine if the TSC tri­bunal just docked these preda­tors a few dol­lars on­ly to re­lease them back amongst their prey while the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit and Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty re­main in the dark!

I pon­der the fates of the un­named Trin­bag­on­ian chil­dren in­volved in the TSC’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions, as I do the iden­ti­ties and fates of the mi­nors who were re­ferred to in the re­cent­ly re­leased (but heav­i­ly redact­ed) Ep­stein Files.

The US De­moc­rats and oth­er de­trac­tors are not giv­ing US Pres­i­dent Trump free pass­es for his deal­ings with the heav­i­ly stig­ma­tised Jef­frey Ep­stein.

Some won­der if the “dis­trac­tion val­ue” of his in­ter­na­tion­al cam­paigns is worth more to him than his pub­licly de­clared in­ten­tions.

His dead­ly Christ­mas strike against “ISIS Ter­ror­ist Scum” in Nige­ria fol­lows his on­go­ing war against “nar­co-ter­ror­ists” on our doorstep.

Will the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion re­al­ly res­cue Venezuela from dic­ta­tor­ship and our re­gion from il­lic­it traf­fick­ing in 2026?

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has stat­ed that Cari­com is “not a re­li­able part­ner” and op­er­ates in a “dys­func­tion­al and self-de­struc­tive man­ner.”

She cit­ed Cari­com’s de­fence of Venezuela de­spite its un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic nar­co-ad­min­is­tra­tion’s threats to Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

She al­so took is­sue with Cari­com’s treat­ment of “our great­est al­ly, the Unit­ed States.”

Will our Gov­ern­ment re­store good re­la­tions with Cari­com in the New Year?

Per­haps the Cari­com heads will re­flect on our Prime Min­is­ter’s crit­i­cism and im­ple­ment rel­e­vant changes to strength­en the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Or will 2026 be a year of re­gion­al col­lapse?

The most sig­nif­i­cant event for our coun­try this year was the elec­tion of a new gov­ern­ment, as the then-in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment lost sev­en seats to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), and two to the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) on April 28.

This put paid to Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s bizarre PNM lead­er­ship swan song, which vault­ed MP Stu­art Young to the top.

The short-lived ex­per­i­ment gave rise, at long last, to Op­po­si­tion Leader and PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, but not be­fore the PNM lost 100,000 GE votes.

Did this have any­thing to do with the eth­nic­i­ty of their 2025 prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date?

The UNC, on the oth­er hand, won with what works for them: form al­liances. The UNC’s Coali­tion of In­ter­ests cap­i­talised on a di­vid­ed PNM.

In 2026, the UNC will start a cal­en­dar year in gov­ern­ment for the first time since 2015, and PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar has warned her min­is­ters, “Brace your back. We have a lot of work to do in the New Year.”

She is ab­solute­ly cor­rect! Hav­ing de­liv­ered on most of her cam­paign promis­es al­ready, the pop­u­la­tion has be­gun to feel the cost of de­liv­ery in oth­er “un­promised” ar­eas.

Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo con­firmed that PSA salaries and back­pay “were on time” but RHA work­ers, along with mem­bers of oth­er unions, will have to wait un­til the end of Jan­u­ary to see any in­creas­es.

Though not cov­ered in its en­tire­ty, the Gov­ern­ment can record its de­liv­ery of the “PSA 10%” this year.

The chal­lenge of find­ing funds to com­plete all pay­ments next year and each sub­se­quent year will be a ma­jor con­cern from Jan­u­ary.

The ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency and the Home In­va­sion Act will be count­ed among this year’s more ef­fec­tive na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty tools.

How­ev­er, the in­stal­la­tion of the US radar sys­tem at Crown Point, along with its “sup­port of­fice” and be­wil­der­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the min­is­ters of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, has made the TPP’s task of de­fend­ing their 13 seats in Jan­u­ary’s To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions a bit hard­er. Of far greater con­cern, it is fu­elling an­ti-Trin­bag­on­ian war rhetoric from Cara­cas.

I must praise the Prime Min­is­ter’s reded­i­ca­tion of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal and the up­grade of the Chil­dren’s Life Fund.

We must al­ways take care of our most vul­ner­a­ble! We must al­so take note of some more re­cent ad­vances in our do­mes­tic en­er­gy sec­tor. We need to hit pay dirt in 2026, though!

On the flip side, af­ter the pas­sage of De­cem­ber’s Fi­nance Bill, my ears are still burn­ing from crit­i­cisms from Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers, es­pe­cial­ly due to the land­lord tax, gam­ing tax­es, and elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge.

SMEs have al­so re­port­ed poor sales at the end of the year.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s em­ploy­ment dri­ve, though ad­mirable, has yet to de­liv­er a re­port.

Af­ter Moody’s down­grad­ed our fi­nan­cial out­look to “junk” sta­tus a cou­ple of weeks ago, we hope for an up­grade ear­ly in 2026.

Hope­ful­ly, the min­is­te­r­i­al trip to the Mid­dle East will prove Moody’s wrong in the New Year.

Whether 2025 was a good year de­pends, as usu­al, on per­spec­tive.

Every elec­tion year should be a good one for democ­ra­cy, though.

We had a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er from the PNM to the UNC. We hope and pray that 2026 will al­so be peace­ful for us.

A bright and pros­per­ous New Year, T&T!