I want to be Cuban in this col­umn, but I do not know if I am up to the task. I want to par­tic­i­pate in my coun­try’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment by im­port­ing from and ex­port­ing to the rest of the world, but 45/47 is stand­ing mas­sive­ly in the way.

US and Is­raeli mil­i­tary ac­tion against Iran is now in its fourth week. The eco­nom­ic im­pact is clear. This is a war of choice, as it is ev­i­dent Iran posed no im­mi­nent threat to the US. Like Iraq, Iran has no weapons of mass de­struc­tion, though Is­rael and the US have nu­clear weapons. The con­se­quences are be­ing felt by Iran and the coun­tries host­ing US bases. The de­struc­tion of up­stream en­er­gy ca­pa­bil­i­ties and the clo­sure of the Strait of Hor­muz are hav­ing glob­al reper­cus­sions.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, I wrote about my trip to Fla­va Vil­lage and the sub­tle ways dis­abled adults are some­times treat­ed like chil­dren. At an event where al­co­hol flowed freely, none was of­fered to guests who were, for all in­tents and pur­pos­es, VIPs.

To­day, March 21, is the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for the Elim­i­na­tion of Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion. This an­nu­al ob­ser­vance com­mem­o­rates the Sharpeville Mas­sacre in 1960, when po­lice in Sharpeville, South Africa, opened fire and killed 69 peo­ple at a peace­ful protest against apartheid ‘pass laws’.

“En­large the place of your tent … do not spare; length­en your cords, and strength­en your stakes.” (Isa­iah 54:2, NKJV)

At 5.30 each morn­ing, 12-year-old Joshua wakes up, not be­cause he wants to, but be­cause he has to. He bare­ly got six hours of sleep. By 7 am, he is sit­ting at a desk in school. Through­out the day, he is told to study, fo­cus, re­vise, pre­pare. Some­times he stays in dur­ing lunchtime. Some­times he gives up his break time to fin­ish his work. Af­ter school, there are lessons. When he gets home, there is home­work and more past pa­pers to do.

At six o’clock one morn­ing not too long ago, a woman sat qui­et­ly out­side a pub­lic clin­ic with a num­bered card in her hand.

In the T&T busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, is there a lead­er­ship prob­lem, or a medi­oc­rity prob­lem, or both? When I in­ter­act with busi­ness­es in T&T, I am struck by the vac­u­ums that ex­ist in both ar­eas. Of course, there are busi­ness­es for which this ques­tion is ir­rel­e­vant. They are mas­ter­ing the me­chan­ics of great lead­er­ship and sus­tained ex­cel­lence. As a re­sult, both their cus­tomers and their em­ploy­ees feel seen, heard and val­ued. This is the foun­da­tion on which busi­ness growth and sus­tained rev­enue streams are built.

There are mo­ments in med­i­cine that nev­er be­come rou­tine. For me, one of them is sit­ting across from a pa­tient and telling them they have can­cer.

Stay­ing fo­cused on my goals of peace and in­tro­spec­tion this Lenten sea­son is prov­ing more dif­fi­cult than in pre­vi­ous years. Even though I have de­lib­er­ate­ly slowed down my life, the strug­gle against an anx­ious mind per­sists, but it comes up against a back­ground of proven tri­umph. I know I will be al­right.

Two weeks ago, the Privy Coun­cil re­fused the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s chal­lenge to a Court of Ap­peal mat­ter al­low­ing de­fault judg­ment in favour of the nine men ac­cused of mur­der­ing Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man.

On March 8, 2026, Trinidad Ex­press colum­nist Suni­ty Ma­haraj pub­lished a col­umn dis­cussing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s at­ten­dance at the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit at Trump Na­tion­al Do­ral Mi­a­mi and the sign­ing of the so-called “Do­ral Char­ter” to com­bat drug car­tels in Latin Amer­i­ca.