It’s back to Par­lia­ment soon with a par­tic­u­lar­ly re­newed sense of pur­pose for all sides since their po­lit­i­cal sur­vival runs par­al­lel with na­tion­al in­ter­est in 2022.

The game’s stiffer due to new fac­tors like­ly aris­ing: with jobs in and out of Gov­ern­ment, re­cent­ly ob­tained po­si­tions. Or what may de­but ahead.

For the pub­lic watch­ing, how­ev­er, job op­por­tu­ni­ties may be loom­ing from a quar­ter—the pub­lic sec­tor—where staffing num­bers may soon be down with up­com­ing law to have pub­lic sec­tors con­vert­ed to qua­si safe zones, manned on­ly by peo­ple who’ve pre­sent­ed vac­ci­na­tion proof or “ap­pro­pri­ate” ex­emp­tions.

Sub­mis­sions to pro­pos­als for the plan which were sought from var­i­ous quar­ters by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al have re­sult­ed in some amend­ments to the first draft.

The pro­posed leg­is­la­tion is ex­pect­ed to cov­er ar­eas in­volved in the plan—from the way sep­a­ra­tion process for the un­vac­ci­nat­ed is han­dled to the med­ical or oth­er grounds on which peo­ple have sought ex­emp­tion from vac­ci­na­tions.

Where the un­vac­ci­nat­ed are in­volved, the pro­posed law will have to de­fine the process for ab­sence with­out leave, how long such fur­lough­ing will ap­ply be­fore job loss oc­curs and how that mesh­es with cur­rent in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions law. Par­tic­u­lar­ly since labour’s al­ready sig­nalled the in­ten­tion to chal­lenge.

But law will al­so have to in­clude con­tin­gen­cies for con­tin­ued pub­lic sec­tor staffing if un­vac­ci­nat­ed num­bers are size­able.

Af­ter Gov­ern­ment’s call for di­vi­sions to sub­mit num­bers of vac­ci­nat­ed, un­vaxxed and staff seek­ing ex­emp­tions, in­di­ca­tions yes­ter­day were that the vac­ci­nat­ed ranged from a high of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 to low of 40 per cent. TTPS is at 51-53 per cent vac­ci­nat­ed and Fire Ser­vices 37 per cent. Pris­ons couldn’t say.

How­ev­er, there are now strong hints that un­manned posts will re­quire filled and that may of­fer TT job op­por­tu­ni­ties ahead.

The Health Min­istry’s new lay­out of its dai­ly COVID bul­letin doesn’t in­clude un­vac­ci­nat­ed num­bers, but on­ly vac­ci­nat­ed (now 48 per cent). In­di­rect­ly this may re­flect the par­tic­i­pa­tion to a less­er ex­tent un­vac­ci­nat­ed may have as safe zone op­er­a­tions ex­pand. Fur­ther, such for­mats are ex­pect­ed with some Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties—an­oth­er pos­si­ble vac­ci­na­tion in­cen­tive.

Op­po­si­tion to the pub­lic sec­tor plan is Gov­ern­ment’s im­me­di­ate X fac­tor chal­lenge—but not the on­ly one.

Be­yond the Feb­ru­ary 7 Debe South by-elec­tion—which UNC’s ex­pect­ed to win—PNM will be mov­ing to height­en the par­ty’s pro­file as it pre­pares for Trinidad’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls. Af­ter its huge To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly loss, LG polls will as­sume al­most gen­er­al elec­tion pro­por­tions, chal­leng­ing the PNM to im­prove on its 2019 LG re­sult of a tie and pop­u­lar vote loss.

The par­ty lacks the lux­u­ry of time, com­pla­cen­cy or over­con­fi­dence re­gard­ing its ground sta­tus. The PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil meets on Mon­day to ex­am­ine its po­si­tion where some watch­ing Coun­cil in­er­tia since the THA loss, are now start­ing to agree that new Coun­cil lead­er­ship is need­ed.

PNM of­fi­cials say the na­tion­al par­ty lead­er­ship elec­tion due this year is ex­pect­ed the fol­low­ing tra­di­tion of main­tain­ing lead­er­ship in an elec­tion year. In 2023, af­ter the LG polls—a Y fac­tor—it’ll left to be seen whether PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley re­turns or names in­clude AG Faris Al-Rawi, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings, or MPs Bri­an Man­ning or Pen­ny Beck­les. Nom­i­nees will re­quire na­tion­al ap­peal since the PNM’s up against more op­po­si­tion forces post THA polls—the Z fac­tor.

UNC’s LG plan­ning, an ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cial said, in­cludes hold­ing San­gre Grande fol­low­ing the cor­rup­tion charge against one coun­cil­lor and flip­ping San Fer­nan­do which the UNC lost by about 100 votes in Co­coyea and Mara­bel­la. The UNC is mulling whether so­cial me­dia com­ments by one south PN­Mite about a San Fer­nan­do Cor­po­ra­tion video pro­duced by Al Rawi, might “as­sist” their Co­coyea fight.

PDP leader Wat­son Duke’s de­c­la­ra­tion about con­test­ing Trinidad elec­tions to­wards a re­la­tion­ship and “uni­son” re­vers­es his cam­paign stance that the PDP want­ed To­ba­go out of Trinidad con­trol. With na­tion­al in­tent the PDP will now have to be scru­ti­nised deep­er be­yond To­ba­go.

The PDP’s en­try in LG polls will ob­vi­ous­ly tar­get PNM “ground” (as New Na­tion­al Vi­sion did in 2019 protests). Just as Con­gress of the Peo­ple or sim­i­lar par­ties may tar­get mid­dle/“in­tel­lec­tu­al” class­es. For­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, whose at­tor­neys con­firmed await­ing word from the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion on the for­mer CoP mer­it list, is yet to state his di­rec­tion.

Whichev­er way, it’ll be heavy winds blow­ing.