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.

On Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der shared his thoughts on the loom­ing ex­tinc­tion of “Africans”—who have sup­pos­ed­ly suc­cumbed to a “men­tal slav­ery” he didn’t prop­er­ly de­scribe.

Whilst for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day fa­mous­ly said that pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own, build­ing and main­tain­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy is found­ed on a few ba­sic prin­ci­ples and a com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing those prin­ci­ples by more than mere lip ser­vice.

African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, which is be­ing cel­e­brat­ed to­day, is a na­tion­al ob­ser­vance that car­ries a sig­nif­i­cance far be­yond the his­tor­i­cal abo­li­tion of slav­ery. This is a day to re­mem­ber suf­fer­ing, ho­n­our re­sis­tance, and cel­e­brate re­silience, and a mo­ment to ex­am­ine how the Eman­ci­pa­tion ex­pe­ri­ence con­tin­ues to shape Trinidad and To­ba­go so­ci­ety and to chal­lenge us to build a na­tion that tru­ly re­flects the promise that “every creed and race finds an equal place.”

There is lit­tle doubt that the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP) is one of the most im­por­tant and con­se­quen­tial so­cial pro­grammes im­ple­ment­ed in post-In­de­pen­dence Trinidad and To­ba­go.

A re­view of the dai­ly re­port­ing land­scape in Trinidad and To­ba­go presents a clear pic­ture of a so­ci­ety wrestling with deep and com­plex chal­lenges.