By now we should all know that the in­stru­ment is much more than the mu­sic it de­liv­ers. That we fre­quent­ly need to step back and ask our­selves: What in the man­ner in which we have clum­si­ly be­gun to as­sem­ble a na­tion com­plete with in­trigue, eter­nal con­flict, and chron­ic con­fu­sion, have we done to de­serve so hand­some a boun­ty?

To­day, World Steel­pan Day, is an oc­ca­sion that should prompt more than the cus­tom­ary cel­e­bra­tion of an in­ven­tion that has car­ried Trinidad and To­ba­go’s name across the globe.

As in­di­cat­ed in yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Guardian by a his­to­ri­an, a so­ci­ol­o­gist and a crim­i­nol­o­gist, racial con­flict is get­ting in the way of Trinidad and To­ba­go's so­cial de­vel­op­ment. They al­so made the point that this con­flict is be­com­ing more in­tense.

While the State has the right to gov­ern and make de­ci­sions in the in­ter­ests of its cit­i­zens, it must do so with­in the con­text of the rule of law. The rule of law is what pro­tects cit­i­zens from po­lit­i­cal ar­bi­trari­ness and from an­ar­chy. The Con­sti­tu­tion pro­tects fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights and free­doms un­der Sec­tions 4 and 5, and they ap­ply to every­one with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion based on race, ori­gin, colour, re­li­gion, or sex.

"Ig­no­rance, al­lied with pow­er, is the most fe­ro­cious en­e­my jus­tice can have." — James Bald­win

The Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to re­quire every cit­i­zen aged 16 and over to car­ry valid iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in pub­lic touch­es one of the most sen­si­tive ar­eas of gov­er­nance, that be­ing the bal­ance be­tween pro­tect­ing pub­lic safe­ty and pre­serv­ing in­di­vid­ual lib­er­ty. 

One of the most mem­o­rable events of my teenage years was on Ju­ly 24, 1976, when Hase­ly Craw­ford be­came the first Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al to win an Olympic Games gold medal, cap­tur­ing the men’s 100 me­tres in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da.

Trinidad and To­ba­go's par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Joint Task Force West­ern Hemi­sphere, along with 17 oth­er na­tions in this hemi­sphere, should come as a sur­prise to no one, giv­en Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's at­ten­dance at the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit held at the Trump Na­tion­al Do­ral Mi­a­mi re­sort in Flori­da on March 7. 

In north, south, east and west, the sounds of steel­bands will echo through the at­mos­phere, invit­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in the cel­e­bra­tion of one of Trinidad and To­ba­go's ma­jor gifts to the world.

One of the mis­takes we make in as­sess­ing the val­ue of the Cari­com project is to re­gard so­cio-cul­tur­al sol­i­dar­i­ty as its sole as­set.

The Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to es­tab­lish 30 joint army-po­lice posts across Trinidad and To­ba­go is, on the face of it, a wel­come re­sponse to the coun­try's crime prob­lem.

The most dis­turb­ing con­se­quence of the re­cent po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day has not been the ex­changes be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion.