As Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at­tends the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in St Kitts and Nevis this week, her pres­ence comes un­der the shad­ow of a com­plex and con­tro­ver­sial chap­ter in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­eign pol­i­cy.

Al­most to the day, 44 years ago, late prime min­is­ter George Cham­bers pro­claimed as a post-Car­ni­val in­struc­tion to the na­tion: “Fete over, back to work!”

As Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar heads to the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in St Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and To­ba­go finds it­self at a defin­ing mo­ment in its re­gion­al jour­ney. The theme “Be­yond Words: Ac­tion To­day for a Thriv­ing, Sus­tain­able Cari­com,” must mark a recom­mit­ment to uni­ty at a time when uni­ty is un­der strain.

Around 11 am Car­ni­val Tues­day morn­ing, I re­alised that Car­ni­val 2026 was over. We had seen all the bands we want­ed to see. K2K, Lost Tribe and All Stars showed that all was not dead, there was some hope, there al­ways is. Shake­speare said of Cleopa­tra: “Age can­not with­er her, nor cus­tom stale/Her in­fi­nite va­ri­ety.” It’s the same with us and our cul­ture, “in­fi­nite va­ri­ety.” As soon as you think the Car­ni­val is over, along comes some­one try­ing a new thing, shout­ing out “Come leh we go!”

The time is right for an in­de­pen­dent analy­sis of the mul­ti­ple tax­es im­posed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Gov­ern­ment.

San­skrit is con­sid­ered one of the world’s old­est lan­guages, orig­i­nat­ing in the 2nd mil­len­ni­um BCE. San­skrit can be cat­e­gorised in­to the Vedic and clas­si­cal.

As the oil boom waned, for­mer prime min­is­ter George Cham­bers ad­mon­ished cit­i­zens, “Fete over, back to work” at the end of the 1982 car­ni­val sea­son. It was an ur­gent call to boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and eco­nom­ic out­put to counter the loom­ing down­turn. The eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy frame­work did not change, and the sharp fall in en­er­gy prices re­sult­ed in a de­pres­sion and a pro­longed pe­ri­od of aus­ter­i­ty.

We all have opin­ions about ca­lyp­so, which is un­ques­tion­ably one of our most trea­sured art forms. It be­comes mem­o­rable, pul­sat­ing po­et­ry when writ­ten and per­formed with the skill that, in the words of the ge­nius Rud­der, “could make a politi­cian cringe.”

Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate leader Dar­rell Al­la­har’s ec­sta­t­ic ex­pres­sion amid a sea of spec­ta­tors dur­ing Car­ni­val Fla­va Fri­day at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah would like­ly have been re­peat­ed on Ash Wednes­day, when T&T was re­moved from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s black­li­s­tand af­ter Gov­ern­ment deemed Car­ni­val 2026 suc­cess­ful.

The seabridge be­tween Port-of-Spain and To­ba­go is a vi­tal eco­nom­ic life­line and when car­go move­ment fal­ters, the con­se­quences rip­ple through su­per­mar­kets, hard­ware stores, ho­tels and house­holds across the is­land.

In de­liv­er­ing his first Lenten mes­sage to hun­dreds of mil­lions of Ro­man Catholics around the world, Pope Leo XIV fo­cused on guid­ance that seems rel­e­vant, uni­ver­sal, mod­ern and achiev­able.

Car­ni­val 2026 is over. De­vout Catholics went to mass to have ash­es sym­bol­i­cal­ly placed on their fore­head yes­ter­day. Hin­dus made of­fer­ings to Lord Shi­va while Di­manche Gras un­fold­ed on stage. Ter­ri Lyons sang a prayer to heal and bless the na­tion to win the Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle and made an ap­peal to the cit­i­zen­ry to unite and re­deem them­selves. A lofty cry in a so­ci­ety prone to frac­ture and with pro­nounce­ments from po­lit­i­cal quar­ters, some­times strik­ing dis­cor­dant, po­lar­is­ing notes.