The econ­o­my and vi­o­lent crime were the two is­sues that pow­ered the Gov­ern­ment to a trounc­ing of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment at the polls on April 28, 2025. In fair­ness, we should wait two years to prop­er­ly grade their per­for­mance in these two ar­eas. That’s how bad things got.

How­ev­er, eval­u­a­tion has to be con­tin­u­ous. Their ap­proach to pass­ing an­ti-crime leg­is­la­tion has been poor, as we’ll see short­ly. One area in which I’ve seen enough to give them an F is pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

They come across as a gov­ern­ment with the mind­set of an op­po­si­tion… more com­fort­able fight­ing than lead­ing. More at ease start­ing fires than putting them out.

Where they need­ed to make per­sua­sive ar­gu­ments to in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors to get their sup­port to pass a bill on the pro­posed Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill, 2026, they chose in­stead to bul­ly them, to trash their rep­u­ta­tions, and to sug­gest, with­out of­fer­ing proof, that two of them tried to trade votes for favours. It’s a se­ri­ous charge. The Prime Min­is­ter has an in­sti­tu­tion­al and moral oblig­a­tion to name names and not al­low a con­ve­nient taint to hang over all of the in­de­pen­dents.

ZOSO is a prob­lem­at­ic pro­pos­al that tar­gets res­i­dents of spe­cif­ic ar­eas with po­lice ac­tions that re­move their con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions.

The scep­ti­cism of the in­de­pen­dents—the swing vote for the three-fifths re­quired in the Sen­ate—was un­der­stand­able. In­stead of work­ing with them, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie de­cid­ed that the Gov­ern­ment won’t con­sid­er amend­ments. The bill as writ­ten, or noth­ing.

The tone was set ear­ly by the com­bat­ive leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath. He thought it was a good idea, one week in­to the term of the Gov­ern­ment, to pa­rade ca­reer pub­lic ser­vants be­fore the cam­eras while haul­ing out the hos­pi­tal­i­ty liquor stash at the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence. He want­ed to back al­le­ga­tions that the pre­vi­ous oc­cu­pants had a drink­ing prob­lem, and to show that the place was un­in­hab­it­able.

All that it high­light­ed over time was the Prime Min­is­ter’s bare­ly-there gov­er­nance, some­thing that had for­eign pol­i­cy reper­cus­sions at last Feb­ru­ary’s Cari­com sum­mit.

There’s rhetor­i­cal tal­ent on the Gov­ern­ment bench­es. Sen­a­tor Dar­rell Al­la­har, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the PM and leader of their sen­ate cau­cus, has shown in de­bate in par­lia­ment that one can de­liv­er hard punch­es deft­ly and with mea­sured­ness. Sad­dam Ho­sein can over­cook the pi­cong flung across the aisle, but when on mes­sage on pol­i­cy, he’s a good com­mu­ni­ca­tor. Every­one who knows De­vesh Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, tells me that he’s the re­al deal.

And yet the Gov­ern­ment peo­ple who are their most frontal in pub­lic dis­course are the ones who sound off on every­thing on so­cial me­dia—al­most al­ways on is­sues out­side of their re­mit—and present no ev­i­dence that they’re craft­ing se­ri­ous pol­i­cy in their lane.

One of them sug­gest­ed that In­dia would nuke Venezuela on T&T’s be­half, an­oth­er said that Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett had con­trol over mu­ni­tions and re­ferred to her as the “gen­er­al sec­re­tary” in weigh­ing in loud and wrong on the Brent Thomas mat­ter, and an­oth­er called for An­tigua and Bar­bu­da vot­ers to re­move Gas­ton Browne for hav­ing the temer­i­ty to see an is­sue dif­fer­ent­ly from Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The Gov­ern­ment is mes­sage-in­dis­ci­plined, and the tone is set by the Prime Min­is­ter. She’s got con­sid­er­able strengths as a pub­lic speak­er… smart, per­son­able in per­son, and peer­less at en­gag­ing the re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ty. She can sum­mon wit, as when Padarath made a spec­ta­cle of him­self at the Hy­att’s Lime fete dur­ing Car­ni­val.

Yet, she of­ten favours ver­bal abuse over rea­soned de­bate. Peo­ple who hold dif­fer­ent opin­ions are crooked. Sen­a­tors un­per­suad­ed by her Gov­ern­ment’s ZOSO leg­is­la­tion are sid­ing with crim­i­nals. She de­scribed Cari­com’s un­der­stand­able op­po­si­tion to in­creased US mil­i­tari­sa­tion in a tourism-de­pen­dent re­gion as “fak­ery.” She has de­scribed Cari­com as “odi­ous” and “cor­rupt” when she didn’t get her way.

Some of her di­vi­sive rhetoric has been di­rect­ed in­ward. The Gov­ern­ment lob­bies Britain to re­scind visa re­stric­tions on T&T cit­i­zens, while the PM ap­plauds the US for re­vok­ing the visas of those who crit­i­cise the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. And the PM should re­tire talk of “be­yond the light­house.” She’s PM of all of T&T—in­clud­ing the parts that didn’t vote for her.