They’re cur­rent­ly mark­ing their three-month an­niver­sary in of­fice. But Gov­ern­ment front­line min­is­ters—and their leader—were mum yes­ter­day to query on whether, when they took their oath of of­fice in ear­ly May, they ever ex­pect­ed that is­sues of a lev­el re­quir­ing a State of Emer­gency (SoE) would have arisen.

A sole re­sponse came from En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal: “These are se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters and best ad­dressed by our Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter.”

Mooni­lal, at a South func­tion, was among min­is­ters ab­sent from yes­ter­day’s African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tion out­side the Trea­sury build­ing, which a min­is­te­r­i­al del­e­ga­tion graced. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er spoke at cel­e­bra­tions at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Be­yond com­ment, com­pli­ment or com­plaint about the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s three-month per­for­mance—a mix­ture of re­view­ing con­di­tions, re­tool­ing to pref­er­ence and start­ing to ren­der some promis­es ful­filled - the tur­bu­lence en­coun­tered hasn’t been due to the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) per­for­mance.

Gov­ern­ment’s de­but year is in­deli­bly marked with the SoE, as is Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro’s, emerg­ing as a CoP for the times. Fol­low­ing the Ju­ly 18 SoE an­nounce­ment, two weeks and 6,594 TTPS search­es up to Thurs­day, Gue­var­ro’s bap­tism of fire has tak­en the TTPS through its paces on as­sort­ed fronts: hun­dreds of ar­rests, weapons, am­mu­ni­tion and dan­ger­ous drugs con­fis­ca­tion. And enough in­tel along the way de­not­ing con­tin­u­ing chal­lenges.

In­tel­li­gence sources, com­ment­ing on the threat avert­ing to date, said there’s “still work to be done”.

If prison sys­tems fa­cil­i­tat­ed gang lead­ers in build­ing em­pires “in­side,” mega shifts, plus stream­lin­ing of au­thor­i­ties’ sys­tems, have to un­fold.

The mul­ti-pronged goal of an or­gan­ised crim­i­nal syn­di­cate op­er­at­ing with­in the pris­ons and lever­ag­ing ex­ter­nal help, emerged as ground­ed in push­back to Gov­ern­ment’s bid to dis­man­tle gang con­trol of cer­tain so­cial pro­grammes. In tan­dem was the tar­get­ing of per­sons in­volved with on­go­ing cas­es, plus dis­trac­tion at­tacks cam­ou­flag­ing a planned prison break. Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke up to Tues­day about crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty en­mesh­ing so­cial pro­grammes.

An in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team ap­point­ed soon af­ter the SoE launch is re­view­ing/re­struc­tur­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme, Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme and the Reaf­foresta­tion pro­gramme.

With the three-month SoE—the sec­ond this year—end­ing in Oc­to­ber, its ef­fects on Gov­ern­ment’s plans and T&T’s in­vest­ment pro­file are ahead. Apart from a Ghana team’s re­cent vis­it, Gov­ern­ment’s sought hard to for­ti­fy its im­age with pos­i­tive news dai­ly.

Since an SoE af­fects in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings, it’s ahead how it sits with glob­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies who fol­low se­cu­ri­ty is­sues close­ly. This, as Gov­ern­ment seeks in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy play­ers, in­clud­ing con­tin­u­ing the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s open­ing up of talks with Exxon.

The ef­fect on the 2026 Bud­get is al­so pend­ing. Whether Gov­ern­ment’s ful­fil­ment of promis­es will bal­loon it be­yond the 2025 Bud­get of $59.741 bil­lion—sup­ple­ment­ed in June by $3 bil­lion—is ahead.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo’s con­stituen­cy, in a Bud­get con­sul­ta­tion state­ment, stat­ed that he faces “a dif­fi­cult chal­lenge due to low en­er­gy prices, col­lapsed oil/gas pro­duc­tion, and re­sul­tant high deficits.”

But amid the SoE, Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued of­fer­ing con­ces­sions —“more,” “free,” “in­creased”—at Cab­i­net me­dia brief­in­gs, im­prov­ing on PNM pro­vi­sions, steady­ing its pub­lic foot­ing.

Coy replies from Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Tan­coo about pub­lic ser­vants’ ten per cent in­crease missed the cue. Re­cent­ly fea­tured UNC plat­form speak­er, Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas’ ad­mis­sion that mem­bers “were ask­ing ques­tions,” was telling of their views.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions are ex­pect­ed to start soon, it’s con­firmed. But some ex­pect post-Bud­get de­liv­ery is al­so rea­son­able, fol­low­ing some pa­ra­me­ters in the pub­lic do­main.

The PNM, stamped with blame by Gov­ern­ment for al­low­ing gang dom­i­nance of so­cial pro­grammes —par­tic­u­lar­ly in its East/West cor­ri­dor base—has field­ed crit­i­cism from with­in on leader Pen­ny Beck­les’s choice of deputy lead­ers. Based on PNM’s—and her own—cir­cum­stances, it lacked po­ten­tial, seem­ing geared main­ly to PNM’s cur­rent is­sues.

Leg­isla­tive deputy leader Colm Im­bert’s po­lit­i­cal bag­gage from his ten-year tenure is bal­anced by in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­o­ry, which the leader and par­ty need. San­jeev Bood­hu, per­haps to at­tract young/In­do mem­bers and re­fresh­ing the PNM’s pol­i­cy is forth­com­ing.

It’s al­so ahead how par­ty/elec­tion mat­ters deputy leader Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, whose com­ments caused rifts with the last lead­er­ship, at­tracts mem­bers and rec­ti­fies the par­ty’s fall­out with trade unions—which oc­curred dur­ing her tenure as labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer—par­tic­u­lar­ly with the PSA, her for­mer af­fil­i­ate.

“I un­der­stand your pain,” she’s said of PSA’s cur­rent wait.