This past week of­fered Trinidad and To­ba­go yet an­oth­er un­set­tling re­minder that, in mo­ments when lead­er­ship and clar­i­ty are need­ed most, the gov­ern­ment seems de­ter­mined to op­er­ate be­hind closed doors. On Tues­day, No­vem­ber 25, the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen­er­al Dan Caine, the high­est-rank­ing of­fi­cer in the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary, vis­it­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go for a two-hour meet­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s.

A vis­it of that mag­ni­tude should have trig­gered a prop­er me­dia brief­ing. In­stead, re­porters were again re­duced to ask­ing ques­tions to the Prime Min­is­ter as she left Par­lia­ment. And when asked about what she and Gen­er­al Caine dis­cussed, the Prime Min­is­ter in­sist­ed that Venezuela, our im­me­di­ate neigh­bour, and the sin­gle most volatile is­sue in hemi­spher­ic se­cu­ri­ty, “did not come up.”

Like most cit­i­zens, I find it very hard to be­lieve that the top mil­i­tary of­fi­cer of the Unit­ed States carved time out of his glob­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to come to Port of Spain for small talk and dou­bles. Yet with­out be­ing prompt­ed, the Prime Min­is­ter quick­ly added, “It’s not a mil­i­tary force as such. We are not about to launch any cam­paign against Venezuela.” One is re­mind­ed of Shake­speare’s fa­mous line, the la­dy doth protest too much, me­thinks.

What fol­lowed in the hours and days af­ter that meet­ing has on­ly deep­ened the pub­lic’s doubts.

The very next day, flight-track­ing plat­forms de­tect­ed a US Air Force C-17 Globe­mas­ter III land­ing in To­ba­go. This is not a sight­see­ing air­craft, nor is it a piece of ca­su­al con­struc­tion equip­ment. Ac­cord­ing to the US Air Force’s of­fi­cial pro­file, the Globe­mas­ter is ca­pa­ble of rapid strate­gic de­liv­ery of troops and car­go di­rect­ly in­to for­ward de­ploy­ment zones. Yet when re­porters pressed the Prime Min­is­ter, she claimed the air­craft was “help­ing us with some­thing to do with the air­port” and had “done a bit of road­way.”

If the sit­u­a­tion were not so se­ri­ous, the ex­pla­na­tion would al­most be com­i­cal.

With­in 24 hours, the sto­ry shift­ed. On Thurs­day, the Prime Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted that US Marines were al­so in To­ba­go as­sist­ing with “radar sur­veil­lance” and “in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tions” re­lat­ed to nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, an ex­tra­or­di­nary ex­pan­sion of her orig­i­nal ver­sion. And still, this re­vi­sion did lit­tle to set­tle the ris­ing pub­lic alarm.

Yet when ques­tioned again, this time while dis­trib­ut­ing lap­tops in her con­stituen­cy, the Prime Min­is­ter said that she had on­ly just learned of the radar-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties. Imag­ine that, the head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil dis­cov­er­ing new de­tails about for­eign mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in her own coun­try through “fur­ther en­quiries” af­ter the pub­lic had al­ready raised the alarm.

Her ex­pla­na­tion? “On fur­ther en­quiries … yes, in To­ba­go, there are some. US Marines are there, and they’re help­ing us with the air­port… the run­way and the road and radar.”

But why did this in­for­ma­tion ar­rive to her in stages? Why did her ac­count change three times in less than 72 hours? And why was the truth on­ly ac­knowl­edged af­ter cit­i­zens ex­posed the fact that the US mil­i­tary pres­ence went far be­yond “road­works”?

Even more trou­bling, on Wednes­day, the Prime Min­is­ter claimed there were no Marines in the coun­try be­cause the 350-mem­ber 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit, which had been here on joint train­ing from No­vem­ber 16 to 21, had al­ready left. On­ly af­ter fur­ther pres­sure did she re­verse her­self, again, and ad­mit that “some” were in To­ba­go as­sist­ing with the air­port project.

This is not how a trans­par­ent gov­ern­ment be­haves.

Yet through all of this, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­fused to ad­dress the na­tion di­rect­ly. No tele­vised state­ment. No clear re­port to the pop­u­la­tion. No ac­knowl­edge­ment that Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not af­ford care­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion, half-in­for­ma­tion, or shift­ing ex­pla­na­tions, es­pe­cial­ly when deal­ing with a glob­al mil­i­tary su­per­pow­er and a re­gion­al neigh­bour ex­pe­ri­enc­ing deep in­sta­bil­i­ty.

Gov­ern­ments do not own a coun­try or its re­sources. They are care­tak­ers, tem­po­rary man­agers en­trust­ed with the du­ty to in­form, in­volve and re­spect the cit­i­zens who placed them there. Hon­esty is not op­tion­al. Ac­count­abil­i­ty is not a favour. Trans­paren­cy is not a lux­u­ry to be ex­tend­ed at the gov­ern­ment’s con­ve­nience.

And yet week af­ter week, we see a Prime Min­is­ter who speaks on­ly when cor­nered, clar­i­fies on­ly when con­tra­dict­ed and up­dates the pub­lic on­ly af­ter be­ing forced in­to ad­mis­sion. At the pre­cise mo­ment when geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions are ris­ing just sev­en miles off our coast, this coun­try is be­ing kept in the dark by the one per­son most re­spon­si­ble for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty clar­i­ty.

As the Unit­ed States in­creas­es its mil­i­tary foot­print in our wa­ters and on our soil, and as Venezuela be­comes an even more un­pre­dictable flash­point, it is sim­ply not cred­i­ble to as­sure the pop­u­la­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go will re­main un­touched by events un­fold­ing next door.

We must ask whether the Prime Min­is­ter, in her ea­ger­ness to em­u­late and please pow­er­ful part­ners, has stepped in­to ter­ri­to­ry far be­yond her depth. And more im­por­tant­ly, whether her re­peat­ed re­fusal to lev­el with the pub­lic sig­nals a gov­ern­ment that has for­got­ten that its au­thor­i­ty is tem­po­rary, con­di­tion­al and an­swer­able to the peo­ple, not the oth­er way around.