In the Tom and Jer­ry pol­i­tics of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it’s al­most nev­er ac­knowl­edged that two things can be true at once. Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo’s nom­i­na­tion to the pres­i­den­cy by then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was prob­lem­at­ic, even provoca­tive. On the oth­er hand, the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent sharp at­tacks on the leg­isla­tive in­tegri­ty of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors that Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo ap­point­ed were im­prop­er, un­seem­ly and un­fair.

In nom­i­nat­ing the at­tor­ney and Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate to be the Pres­i­dent in 2023, Row­ley was pre­sent­ing to the elec­toral col­lege some­one deeply en­tan­gled in his par­ty, and who’d served in a num­ber of of­fices of the PNM gov­ern­ment. She’d act­ed as Pres­i­dent on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions–as the pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate does–but it did not mean that she was a pru­dent choice to hold the high­er of­fice per­ma­nent­ly.

This is not a slight against Kan­ga­loo–in­tel­li­gent, mag­is­te­r­i­al and who, frankly, looks born to the role. Un­der­stand­ably, the Pres­i­dent did not have the trust of the UNC then, and she does not have it now. Even if she in­ter­prets her pres­i­den­tial brief con­sci­en­tious­ly and acts fas­tid­i­ous­ly straight down the mid­dle, past and per­cep­tion can nev­er be erased.

Per­cep­tion mat­ters in all ar­eas. Renowned Eng­lish um­pire Dick­ie Bird op­er­at­ed at a time when home um­pires stood in in­ter­na­tion­al match­es. Vis­it­ing play­ers liked and trust­ed Bird. Oth­er um­pires, such as Fred Goodall of New Zealand, be­came en­meshed in con­tro­ver­sy, with vis­it­ing play­ers ac­cus­ing them of bias. Trust in um­pire Bird re­mained even when the vis­i­tors dis­agreed with a de­ci­sion that Bird gave in favour of an Eng­land play­er.

Crick­et’s gov­ern­ing body, the ICC, un­der­stood that the stakes were too high and the per­cep­tion of neu­tral­i­ty was too im­por­tant to con­tin­ue to have home um­pires stand. Over time, they in­tro­duced neu­tral um­pires; strength­ened ad­ju­di­ca­tion with a TV um­pire, a match ref­er­ee and De­ci­sion Re­view Sys­tem (DRS) tech­nol­o­gy. Those mea­sures did not elim­i­nate mis­takes, but they went a long way to­wards restor­ing trust in de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials em­ployed the Or­wellian ar­gu­ment that in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors should prove their in­de­pen­dence by rub­ber-stamp­ing leg­is­la­tion from a gov­ern­ing par­ty with a huge par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty, the Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Bill, 2025. We can nev­er know how many of the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors who vot­ed for the leg­is­la­tion did so be­cause of the heavy pres­sure of the at­tacks, or out of gen­uine con­vic­tion that it was sound. The pained looks on their faces dur­ing the tele­vised voice vote sug­gest that the at­tacks got to them. Those who did not sup­port it should have had the leg­isla­tive courage to vote “no”. Their own ar­gu­ments sug­gest­ed that they had a du­ty to.

I’m not a lawyer, but to para­phrase US Supreme Court Jus­tice Pot­ter Stew­art in Ja­co­bel­lis v Ohio in 1964, even those of us who have rudi­men­ta­ry pow­ers of an­a­lyt­i­cal think­ing ought to recog­nise bad law when we see it. The law seems des­tined for the Privy Coun­cil, like­ly through proxy chal­lenge.

With Stu­art Young, the prob­lem wasn’t the fix. The prin­ci­ple of a tiered sys­tem of ben­e­fits is sound and sen­si­ble. It was the retroac­tive reach-back that clear­ly tar­get­ed him. Look, I don’t like it that a PM as short-tenured as Young can get full whack af­ter six weeks in of­fice, but here’s how I look at things. Young didn’t set out to be PM for a month and a half. He sought a longer man­date on April 28, but the elec­torate had oth­er ideas.

Ben­e­fits and the qual­i­fi­ca­tion prin­ci­ples un­der­ly­ing them some­times come un­der scruti­ny. For (im­per­fect) ex­am­ple, the 26-year-old wife of the 86-year-old bil­lion­aire should not have to for­feit her le­gal en­ti­tle­ment to a share of his es­tate up­on his death, be­cause she’d on­ly been mar­ried to him for a short time.

There’s a prob­a­bil­i­ty of the law lords ad­min­is­ter­ing a ju­di­cial slap on the T&T Gov­ern­ment when the in­evitable ap­peal makes its way to their dock­et. Liz Truss was prime min­is­ter of Britain for sev­en weeks. The Labour gov­ern­ment of Sir Keir Starmer did not try to strong-arm her out of her ben­e­fits.

The irony of all of this is that Row­ley, a sci­en­tist, en­gi­neered the as­cen­sion of both Young and Kan­ga­loo. Both ac­tions col­lid­ed in the Sen­ate last week.