Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The third month of the year was dom­i­nat­ed by po­lit­i­cal up­heavals and Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions, while vi­o­lent crime con­tin­ued to pose con­cerns.

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments came on March 17, when Stu­art Young was sworn in as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter, suc­ceed­ing Dr Kei­th Row­ley who served for al­most a decade with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

Row­ley, who re­mained as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, made his­to­ry as the first sit­ting prime min­is­ter to step down be­fore a gen­er­al elec­tion. In a fi­nal sit-down with jour­nal­ists, Row­ley, who was praised and crit­i­cised by var­i­ous quar­ters for his ser­vice, said he had no re­grets.

Mean­while, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Po­lit­i­cal Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar protest­ed Young’s ap­point­ment, ar­gu­ing that on­ly a fresh gen­er­al elec­tion could le­git­i­mate­ly de­ter­mine the coun­try’s lead­er­ship. She de­scribed his swear­ing-in as “an as­sault on democ­ra­cy”, in­sist­ing it was not re­flec­tive of the peo­ple’s choice. She al­so re­fused to at­tend the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny, say­ing she would not “give le­git­i­ma­cy” to some­thing she be­lieved was “un­con­sti­tu­tion­al”.

Young’s tenure as Prime Min­is­ter be­gan with im­me­di­ate ac­tion. One day af­ter be­ing sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter, he an­nounced April 28 as the date for the gen­er­al elec­tion, dis­solv­ing Par­lia­ment at mid­night. Some po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts sug­gest­ed that the sud­den an­nounce­ment was a sign of in­ter­nal tur­moil with­in the PNM par­ty. Just days af­ter he was sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter, Young’s past sur­faced, with claims of a bul­ly­ing in­ci­dent 33 years ago when he was a 17-year-old stu­dent at St Mary’s Col­lege in Port-of-Spain.

In re­sponse, Young, in a state­ment, lat­er said it was “deeply un­for­tu­nate” that the in­ci­dent oc­curred when he was a teenag­er but added that he had “no in­ten­tion of min­imis­ing any­one’s feel­ings”.

He said the in­ci­dent was trau­mat­ic for every­one in­volved. Young al­so stat­ed that he was ful­ly com­mit­ted, as Prime Min­is­ter, to ad­dress­ing is­sues of bul­ly­ing in schools.

Mean­while, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Adri­an Leonce of the Young Cab­i­net be­came em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy af­ter ad­mit­ting that he had reg­is­tered a UK-based com­pa­ny us­ing an­oth­er per­son’s ad­dress be­fore lat­er ter­mi­nat­ing the com­pa­ny. While Leonce ac­knowl­edged reg­is­ter­ing the com­pa­ny, he de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

On the Op­po­si­tion front, the UNC launched its cam­paign at Na­pari­ma Bowl on March 24, pre­sent­ing 18 can­di­dates, but con­tin­ued to grap­ple with in­ter­nal tur­moil, in­clud­ing nine res­ig­na­tions in less than a month. De­spite what was de­scribed as “or­ches­trat­ed res­ig­na­tions” by the par­ty’s hi­er­ar­chy, Per­sad-Bisses­sar as­sured her sup­port­ers that all was well with­in the par­ty, and they would win the elec­tion.

For­mer Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray, one of the UNC MPs la­belled as a dis­si­dent, was lat­er blanked by the elec­tion screen­ing com­mit­tee to fight the seat on a UNC tick­et and was even­tu­al­ly re­placed by Nicholas Mor­ris.

By month’s end, can­di­date lists were fi­nalised. Among them was Phillip Alexan­der, set to chal­lenge Young di­rect­ly for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West. Roger Alexan­der was al­so an­nounced as the UNC can­di­date for the con­stituen­cy of Tu­na­puna, days af­ter he re­signed as a po­lice of­fi­cer. He is now the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

The rul­ing PNM al­so faced in­ter­nal changes, with Phillip Watts, a con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cial (ex­ec­u­tive chair­man) in La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, de­fect­ing to the UNC, with long-time par­ty mem­ber Kennedy Swarats­ingh cross­ing over as well. Watts sub­se­quent­ly be­came the UNC’s can­di­date for that seat ahead of the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. He un­seat­ed the PNM’s Fos­ter Cum­mings and be­came the MP for the area.

Watts is now hold­ing the po­si­tion of Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, while Swarats­ingh is the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment. Swarats­ingh is al­so a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

To­ba­go ten­sion, in­ter­na­tion­al chal­lenges

The sis­ter isle faced its own up­heavals with To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris fil­ing a po­lice re­port against Sec­re­tary of Set­tle­ments and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Ian Pol­lard, claim­ing Pol­lard threat­ened him dur­ing a ple­nary sit­ting. Mor­ris al­so al­leged Pol­lard had pre­vi­ous­ly warned him that he had “Mus­lim friends” who would deal with him.

On the in­ter­na­tion­al front, then prime min­is­ter Dr Row­ley de­fend­ed T&T’s sov­er­eign­ty, re­ject­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s threats to im­pose visa re­stric­tions on gov­ern­ments par­tic­i­pat­ing in Cu­ba’s med­ical mis­sions. He in­sist­ed that the Caribbean must re­main a zone of peace.

Fol­low­ing Young’s swear­ing-in as Prime Min­is­ter on March 27, US Sen­a­tor Mar­co Ru­bio pub­licly called on T&T to adopt a firmer stance to­ward Venezuela, en­cour­ag­ing clos­er align­ment with Wash­ing­ton’s pol­i­cy to­ward the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion. In sub­se­quent pub­lic re­marks, Young re­it­er­at­ed T&T’s stat­ed strate­gic pri­or­i­ties, in­clud­ing that the Drag­on Gas deal with Venezuela re­mained un­der con­sid­er­a­tion, amid pub­lic dis­cus­sion about the project’s sta­tus.

An­oth­er de­vel­op­ment that im­pact­ed lo­cals came when the Unit­ed King­dom in­tro­duced a visa re­quire­ment for T&T cit­i­zens, cit­ing a sharp in­crease in asy­lum ap­pli­ca­tions from T&T na­tion­als.

Bla­ka Dan tri­umphs; Mon­tano reigns for Car­ni­val 2025

Car­ni­val 2025, held on March 3–4, brought its usu­al vi­bran­cy and cul­tur­al mile­stones. Grena­di­an so­ca artiste Wren­roy “Bla­ka Dan” Ogiste won the in­au­gur­al Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on ti­tle, earn­ing the $1 mil­lion grand prize with his song “Bless­ings”.

Vet­er­an per­former Machel Mon­tano cap­tured both the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch and Road March ti­tles with “Pep­per Vine” and “Pardy”, re­spec­tive­ly.

So­ca cou­ple Fay-Ann Lyons and Ian “Bun­ji Gar­lin” Al­varez an­nounced their with­draw­al from lo­cal com­pe­ti­tions, cit­ing con­cerns about fair­ness and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion. Lyons’ an­nounce­ment came in a so­cial me­dia post in which she ques­tioned what she deemed as pre­ma­ture com­ments made by Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) judge Saman­tha Richards on the Road March race in San Fer­nan­do.

Stat­ing that the com­pe­ti­tion sec­tor was no longer at­trac­tive to them, her post added, “The in­tegri­ty, the way things are be­ing done, and the peo­ple that they are putting to do the things that they have to do is very un­com­fort­able and un­set­tling to us. So, in light of that we have de­cid­ed to step away and I do hope that you all do bet­ter, cause y’all have younger artistes com­ing up and if y’all re­al­ly care about cul­ture, then the man­ner in which you present the cul­ture mov­ing for­ward should be of the ut­most im­por­tance, and dis­ci­pline is a big part of it, as well as trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, hon­esty and, most im­por­tant, in­tegri­ty which seems to be in a deficit right now.”

Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus se­cured vic­to­ry in the Large Con­ven­tion­al Band cat­e­go­ry, while Helon Fran­cis was crowned Ca­lyp­so Monarch with “To Whom It May Be”. The Lost Tribe claimed the Se­nior Band of the Year (Large Cat­e­go­ry) ti­tle with “Lost in Time”, and Kalicha­ran Mas cap­tured the Large Band of the Year (San Fer­nan­do) ti­tle for the 31st time with “The Chron­i­cles of Time”.

Trag­i­cal­ly, rev­eller Sel­wyn Lit­tle was crushed to death dur­ing fes­tiv­i­ties at Cipero Street in San Fer­nan­do on Car­ni­val Mon­day, reignit­ing de­bates about pa­rade safe­ty.

On Car­ni­val Tues­day dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tions, a shoot­ing near the St James Mar­ket left one man dead and three oth­ers in­jured.

Crime and con­tro­ver­sy

The com­mu­ni­ty of Sea Lots fea­tured promi­nent­ly in March 2025 as un­rest and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns came to the fore. Res­i­dents com­plained about a spike in crim­i­nal at­tacks, and just a day be­fore the demon­stra­tion, a group of more than 30 women turned up out­side the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, where they met with then act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin to plead for as­sis­tance.

Fol­low­ing demon­stra­tions in which res­i­dents al­leged that po­lice fired shots at them dur­ing con­fronta­tions, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land in­ter­vened on March 10. He vis­it­ed the area and con­vened a “peace meet­ing” at Pi­o­neer Dri­ve, Sea Lots, seek­ing to ease ten­sions and re­store calm. On March 12, po­lice of­fi­cers in Sea Lots dis­man­tled 22 il­le­gal sur­veil­lance cam­eras that had been in­stalled through­out the com­mu­ni­ty. Au­thor­i­ties claimed the de­vices were be­ing used by crim­i­nal el­e­ments to mon­i­tor move­ments in and out of the area.

Mur­ders con­tin­ued in­to the month of March, with one of the most grue­some cas­es be­ing the dis­cov­ery of a sev­ered head in­side a cool­er in Sen­non Vil­lage, Siparia, lat­er iden­ti­fied as Siparia Joanne Estick. Her body has not been found.

In the ju­di­cial realm, the Privy Coun­cil up­held that for­mer chief mag­is­trate Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar was forced to re­sign and dis­missed an ap­peal brought by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC). Less than 24 hours af­ter Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan called on Archie (who chaired the JLSC) to step down as he (Khan) staged a one-man protest out­side the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain on March 25.

Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, who was part of the Ay­ers-Cae­sar le­gal team, then held a press con­fer­ence ques­tion­ing how the Chief Jus­tice could con­tin­ue in of­fice af­ter the Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion.

March closed with sweep­ing po­lit­i­cal changes, leav­ing the na­tion watch­ing close­ly as cit­i­zens pre­pared to head to the polls on April 28.