As Com­mon­wealth lead­ers gath­er in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Cari­com chair­man and St Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter Philip J. Pierre has right­ly em­pha­sised that any mean­ing­ful di­a­logue must ul­ti­mate­ly ad­dress repara­to­ry jus­tice. The pres­ence of King Charles III at the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing, which starts to­day, has brought re­newed at­ten­tion to a mat­ter that Caribbean gov­ern­ments have pur­sued for years.

In San­skrit, the term pan­dit de­notes one who is versed in Vedic scrip­tures, prac­tices and rit­u­als, knowl­edge­able in Hin­du law, mu­sic and phi­los­o­phy and per­forms the du­ties of a schol­ar, teacher and ad­vi­sor. The orig­i­nal us­age of the word “pan­dit” refers to a Brah­min and it is syn­ony­mous with the term “Puro­hit.”

For much of its post-in­de­pen­dence his­to­ry, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy has been guid­ed by sev­er­al en­dur­ing prin­ci­ples. These in­clude re­spect for the sov­er­eign­ty and equal­i­ty of na­tions, ad­her­ence to in­ter­na­tion­al law and the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) Char­ter, the pur­suit of an in­de­pen­dent for­eign pol­i­cy free from dom­i­na­tion by ma­jor pow­ers, and a com­mit­ment to non-in­ter­fer­ence in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of oth­er states. At the same time, the coun­try has sup­port­ed col­lec­tive in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tion in ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances in­volv­ing se­ri­ous hu­man­i­tar­i­an crises or threats to in­ter­na­tion­al peace.

A gov­ern­ment elect­ed by the peo­ple has a man­date to gov­ern, but that man­date is not a li­cence to dis­miss crit­i­cism or treat dis­agree­ment as po­lit­i­cal hos­til­i­ty. In a democ­ra­cy, the right to ques­tion au­thor­i­ty is not an in­con­ve­nience. It is an es­sen­tial safe­guard.

Re­cent­ly, I wrote about peo­ple strug­gling to sur­vive in an eco­nom­ic sys­tem that of­ten places prof­it above hu­man­i­ty. The poor and work­ing class help sus­tain that sys­tem, yet, are treat­ed as ex­pend­able by banks and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions when they fall in­to fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s vote against a Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the Unit­ed States em­bar­go on Cu­ba may prove to be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant for­eign pol­i­cy de­ci­sions the coun­try has made in re­cent decades. For the first time in more than 30 years, this na­tion broke with a con­sis­tent vot­ing record and with the po­si­tion tra­di­tion­al­ly adopt­ed by most of its Cari­com part­ners.

Is­rael’s lat­est gen­er­al elec­tion ap­pears set to pro­duce an­oth­er coali­tion gov­ern­ment, a fa­mil­iar out­come in a coun­try where no sin­gle par­ty has tra­di­tion­al­ly found it easy to gov­ern alone. Yet, this elec­tion may al­so have cre­at­ed an un­ex­pect­ed open­ing, how­ev­er mod­est, for a dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal fu­ture.

Lu­la da Sil­va has won a nar­row elec­tion vic­to­ry in Brazil. Lu­la still has an ad­van­tage in gov­er­nance be­cause he is the in­cum­bent pres­i­dent. He has al­so led a gov­ern­ment three times be­fore.

I first vis­it­ed Cu­ba in 1987. I was de­tained at the air­port. Was in­tense­ly in­ter­ro­gat­ed dur­ing my trip to the ho­tel. Wrote a po­em in which I sur­mised: “No place for a Tri­ni”. Was told up­on my re­turn that “Spe­cial Branch” had come to my me­dia house ask­ing ques­tions.

For gen­er­a­tions, the Caribbean has recog­nised that the for­tunes of its na­tions are in­ter­con­nect­ed. Eco­nom­ic hard­ship, mi­gra­tion pres­sures and hu­man­i­tar­i­an crises rarely re­main con­fined with­in na­tion­al bor­ders. This shared re­al­i­ty helps ex­plain why Cari­com has long main­tained re­la­tions with Cu­ba de­spite dif­fer­ing po­lit­i­cal sys­tems.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty is one of its great­est strengths. Di­vali, Ram­leela, steel­pan, ca­lyp­so, mas, tas­sa, Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist and Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions help pre­serve her­itage, bring com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er and deep­en un­der­stand­ing among dif­fer­ent groups. Gov­ern­ment sup­port for these ac­tiv­i­ties can be a worth­while in­vest­ment, but it must be guid­ed by fair­ness, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The first time I saw Trinida­di­an doc­tors at work, I thought to my­self, “How ar­ro­gant!” It was at the Port-of- Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal (PoS­GH). I was be­ing tak­en around by a friend of my fam­i­ly, who worked in the laun­dry. She was an old woman, al­most ready to re­tire and, I sup­pose, not very im­por­tant to the two doc­tors she point­ed out to me, be­cause they slow­ly con­tin­ued walk­ing past, ig­nor­ing her at­tempt at in­tro­duc­ing me.