The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) de­ci­sion to can­cel its con­tro­ver­sial $3.4 bil­lion De­sign-Build-Fi­nance hous­ing pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise was the cor­rect one. While the move has sparked po­lit­i­cal de­bate and re­newed scruti­ny of the hous­ing sec­tor, the over­rid­ing prin­ci­ple must re­main the pro­tec­tion of the pub­lic in­ter­est and the in­tegri­ty of the coun­try’s pro­cure­ment sys­tem.

June 19 re­mains a defin­ing date in the mod­ern his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go. On this day in 1937, labour un­rest erupt­ed in the deep south, as work­ing-class men and women rose against the in­hu­mane con­di­tions in the oil­fields and sug­ar es­tates—then the back­bone of the colo­nial econ­o­my.

Every Fa­ther’s Day, I give thanks to God for hav­ing had the guid­ance and in­spi­ra­tion of my fa­ther, the late Jus­tice Lennox Deyals­ingh.

The Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) is head­ing in­to its 2027 bud­get cy­cle with an am­bi­tious re­form agen­da, grow­ing con­cern over mem­ber-state con­tri­bu­tions—in­clud­ing the sub­stan­tial Unit­ed States quo­ta—and calls for a re­newed po­lit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion about its fu­ture.

The Ka­reem Mar­celle rant on a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal plat­form about In­di­an and African mu­tu­al dis­like for each oth­er dis­turbed a lot of peo­ple.

The 2026 Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view, pre­sent­ed on Mon­day, was framed as a con­fi­dent de­c­la­ra­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go has turned a fis­cal cor­ner. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo point­ed to a nar­row­er deficit, stronger rev­enues, re­newed in­vestor con­fi­dence and a Gov­ern­ment in­tent on “pro­tect­ing the peo­ple” while mod­ernising the State.

The 2026 Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view is as much a po­lit­i­cal doc­u­ment as it is a fis­cal up­date, pre­sent­ed by a gov­ern­ment ea­ger to demon­strate that, af­ter one year in of­fice, it has be­gun to re­verse eco­nom­ic de­cline, re­store con­fi­dence and re­build State in­sti­tu­tions.

“The sor­row for the dead is the on­ly sor­row from which we refuse to be di­vorced. Every oth­er wound we seek to heal, every oth­er af­flic­tion to for­get; but this wound we con­sid­er it a du­ty to keep open; this af­flic­tion we cher­ish and brood over in soli­tude” Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing (1783-1859).

The po­lit­i­cal ha­rangue among Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment dur­ing last Fri­day night’s Fi­nance Stand­ing Com­mit­tee meet­ing re­flects a trou­bling es­ca­la­tion in ten­sions be­tween the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

The last time Trinidad and To­ba­go qual­i­fied for a world cup, 2006 in Ger­many, I went to all of their match­es – in­clud­ing the last one in Kaiser­slautern, a small town close to France and be­hind God back, as we say.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has faced a trou­bled eco­nom­ic out­look since 2014, when en­er­gy prices de­clined. The twin pri­or­i­ties since then have been, first, to ad­dress crime and the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion, and sec­ond, to put the econ­o­my on a sol­id foun­da­tion to lim­it the ef­fects of volatil­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor. Thank­ful­ly, the coun­try has not suf­fered a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. How­ev­er, like most coun­tries, we had to al­lo­cate ad­di­tion­al re­sources to ad­dress the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which in­creased our debt bur­den.

It was in­evitable that se­cu­ri­ty, the State of Emer­gency - and Gov­ern­ment ver­sus Op­po­si­tion bick­er­ing—would have arisen at Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing yes­ter­day.