Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain Ja­son Gor­don re­called an An­tilles Epis­co­pal Con­fer­ence (AEC) meet­ing in 2018 at­tend­ed by Pope Fran­cis where one of the bish­ops asked the pon­tiff: “Every­where you turn peo­ple are crit­i­cis­ing you. How do you cope with that?”

Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans re­main di­vid­ed on the is­sue of full au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, with no na­tion­al con­sen­sus on the way for­ward.

Vet­er­an poll­ster Dr Vish­nu Bis­ram of North Amer­i­can Caribbean Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NAC­TA) has urged the pub­lic to view po­lit­i­cal sur­veys like the re­cent Hamid Ghany poll as snap­shots, not pre­dic­tions.

Port Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Lyle Alexan­der yes­ter­day de­nied claims of a se­cret deal to pri­va­tise the Port of Port-of-Spain port and put 1,500 work­ers on the bread­line.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James says the promis­es be­ing made on the elec­tion cam­paign trail are “su­per­fi­cial” and dis­con­nect­ed from the eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty fac­ing T&T.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin is ques­tion­ing the find­ings of a Guardian Me­dia-com­mis­sioned opin­ion poll on his per­for­mance. He does not un­der­stand how da­ta that shows 46 per cent of peo­ple grad­ing his per­for­mance as av­er­age could be de­scribed as “be­low par.”

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­scribed as strange a call by Nizam Mo­hammed for Mus­lims to with­hold their vote in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo has joined the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in mourn­ing the death of Pope Fran­cis, de­scrib­ing him as “a trans­for­ma­tion­al leader” and ex­press­ing con­do­lences to the Vat­i­can and the glob­al Catholic com­mu­ni­ty.

With just a week left be­fore vot­ers head to the polls, two Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­dates are ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of us­ing “des­per­ate tac­tics” to dis­tract from what they called its record on crime, in­fra­struc­ture, and pub­lic sec­tor ne­glect.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the death of Pope Fran­cis is a loss not just for the Catholic Church, but for all who val­ue hu­man­i­ty, jus­tice and com­pas­sion.

The death of Pope Fran­cis should serve as a pow­er­ful re­minder to politi­cians about the true mean­ing of pub­lic ser­vice as T&T ap­proach­es elec­tions, says Fr David Khan, Parish Priest of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help Church in San Fer­nan­do.

Head of the Repa­tri­a­tion Com­mit­tee, Nizam Mo­hammed, has called on Mus­lims to with­hold their votes un­less Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young or Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar make a firm com­mit­ment to repa­tri­ate na­tion­als who re­main strand­ed in refugee camps in Syr­ia.