The State of Emer­gency’s ex­ten­sion un­til June was key on yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment agen­da, but Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar’s state­ments on var­i­ous is­sues was what held fo­cus first.

In jus­ti­fy­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion of an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE) on March 3, 2026, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said T&T's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC), which she chairs, not­ed that fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 31 end of the pre­vi­ous SoE, there had been "an in­crease in vi­o­lent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty across the coun­try, most of which has been car­ried out by mem­bers of or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gangs."

The Do­ral Char­ter signed dur­ing the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit last Sat­ur­day sig­nals greater co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the US and T&T to dis­man­tle drug car­tels.

The Shield of the Amer­i­c­as group of 12 coun­tries to which Trinidad and To­ba­go has signed on, is fo­cused on mil­i­tary ap­proach­es to gang and drug re­duc­tion and elim­i­na­tion.

A small, but very sig­nif­i­cant sto­ry re­lat­ed to a move to give le­gal pro­tec­tion to el­e­ments of the Cedar Grove Sug­ar Es­tate in Palmiste, south Trinidad, is an ex­treme­ly im­por­tant ini­tia­tive to pre­serve his­tor­i­cal relics of an era which has passed.

The launch of the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion last Sat­ur­day may well be dri­ven by a gen­uine de­sire to con­front the grow­ing pow­er of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal car­tels.

Every year, since I can re­call, there have been these Car­ni­val post-mortems de­signed to con­sid­er, among oth­er things, the so­cio-eco­nom­ic val­ue of this an­nu­al event. Some of it has been well-in­formed ex­am­i­na­tions guid­ed by mea­sur­able out­comes, oth­ers sim­ply to ex­hib­it lim­it­less ca­pac­i­ty to en­gage in self-serv­ing chat­ter and fan­ta­sy.

A rel­a­tiv­i­ty un­known en­ti­ty with ad­mirable in­ten­tions, the Healthy Caribbean Coali­tion, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with an­oth­er amor­phous group, “Caribbean Pae­di­a­tri­cians,” is call­ing on so­ci­ety to do some­thing about obese chil­dren, de­clar­ing that they were the first to raise the alarm about the prob­lem of obe­si­ty in chil­dren five years ago.

The Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion (AC­CC), an­nounced at the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit in Do­ral, Flori­da, sig­nals a bold at­tempt to con­front the hemi­sphere’s decades-long strug­gle against pow­er­ful transna­tion­al drug car­tels.

The T20 form of crick­et, af­ter al­most 20 years as the great­est pure spec­ta­cle of the grand old game of the Eng­lish Vil­lage Green, fur­ther es­tab­lished it­self at the 2026 World Cup with great per­ma­nen­cy as the most at­trac­tive, dy­nam­ic and fi­nan­cial­ly re­ward­ing for­mat for all in­volved.

The late Sat­gu­ru Sivaya Sub­ra­mu­niyaswa­mi, known as Gu­rude­va (1927-2001), was the Hin­du spir­i­tu­al leader of the largest Hin­du ashram out­side of In­dia. This fa­mous ashram is lo­cat­ed in Hawaii, and all its re­li­gious per­son­al­i­ties are put in “white swamis,” they pro­duce the in­ter­na­tion­al mag­a­zine “Hin­duism to­day” and ad­vise on Hin­du con­cepts.

Lead­er­ship prob­lems are a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge fac­ing democ­ra­cy, as is ev­i­dent when lead­ers un­der­mine the rule of law and po­lit­i­cal­ly in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions, at­tempt to ma­nip­u­late bound­aries, cen­tralise pow­er, and use pop­ulist rhetoric that weak­ens in­sti­tu­tion­al checks and bal­ances.