If there was anything more glaringly evident than the dramatic show of dissatisfaction that Friday's march through the city offered, it was the Government's apparent inability to understand the protest and to formulate a sensible, let alone satisfactory response to it.
The march was variously described as a protest against the Section 34 debacle, the continued presence of Attorney General Anand Ramlogan and Minister of National Security Jack Warner in office and an expression of concern about the quality of governance offered by the People's Partnership.
The crowd, estimated by police officers on the scene to have begun at around 1,000 as they gathered at Woodford Square, was said to have swelled to more than 20,000 along the route before settling at 7,000 for the speeches on the Brian Lara Promenade that ended the gathering.
The protest attracted a range of political, NGO and civil society leaders, among them the Opposition Leader, Keith Rowley, the THA's Orville London, David Abdulah of the MSJ, Kirk Meighoo of the DNA, activist Wayne Kubalsingh, several trade unions marching as the Joint Trade Union Movement, Fixin' T&T's Kirk Waithe, former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and, apparently, Iwer George.
Just hours before the protesters convened, eight applicants who had sought to have their cases dismissed during the brief window that Section 34 was legally in force appeared before Magistrate Ejenny Espinet to seek a hold on legal proceedings until their Section 34 applications were heard by the High Court.
Among the eight were Ishwar Galbaransingh and Steve Ferguson. In the face of the crowd's often scurrilous anger and the furious speeches offered, the Government offered Mr Ramlogan and Mr Warner to the media to rebut the concerns raised.
The Attorney General chose to tiptoe around the issue, falling back on the Government's default position, noting that Government respected, "the fundamental rights and freedoms of the press and freedom of expression." Mr Ramlogan could find no irony in uttering these words, which suggest that the Government's responsibility to uphold the Constitution, and the rights enshrined in it, are exceptional.
Mr Warner took a far different approach in his assessment of the protest march. He challenged the numbers, the ethnic composition of the marchers and dismissed the crowd as "old PNM stalwarts." This put Mr Warner in the position of being outspoken by Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj who said, "It is not a UNC issue, it is not a PNM issue, it is not a COP issue, it is a people issue. This is not an Indian issue, an African issue or a Chinese issue, this is (a) Trinidad and Tobago issue."
Rowley warned that the people would have their say, whether it would come in the Tobago House of Assembly election, the local government election or the general election, the trust he saw as broken would have a price. Until those elections, the Government must acknowledge that a portion of the electorate has grown disenchanted with its approach to governance and the limited response to matters of public concern.
There was little sign after Friday's march that the Government's leadership had come to terms with the representative power of the marchers, choosing instead to diminish the scale and scope of the protest by challenging head counts instead of engaging the reality of the dissatisfaction they represent. It was at this critical point three years ago that the previous administration made the fatal error of dismissing public protests as politics and not civil concern.
Was there politics in play on Friday? It would be naive not to acknowledge that. But the Government would be well advised to acknowledge the scale of unhappiness with their administration that Friday's protest indicates, and to improve their commitment to the transparency and accountability they promised on the campaign trail.