US War Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth has found him­self in some hot wa­ter re­gard­ing a clas­si­fied video of an al­leged “dou­ble tap” strike on a nar­co ter­ror­ist ves­sel on Sep­tem­ber 2, which killed would-be sur­vivors. It re­mind­ed me of when our Prime Min­is­ter said, “Knock it on them, knock it again,” when she was on the GE2025 cam­paign trail. She has since de­liv­ered the Home In­va­sion 2025 bill.

On the oth­er hand, ea­gle-eyed US law­mak­ers are view­ing Hegseth’s al­leged ruth­less­ness as a hu­man rights vi­o­la­tion. Has this put a pause to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ad­vance on the Maduro regime? Not in the slight­est. If any­thing, they are tight­en­ing the noose. Last Wednes­day, US forces seized an oil tanker called “Skip­per” off the Venezue­lan coast that was car­ry­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.9 mil­lion bar­rels of Venezue­lan crude oil to Cu­ba. This ves­sel, pre­vi­ous­ly known as “Adisa,” was sanc­tioned in 2022 by the US Trea­sury for its al­leged in­volve­ment in an oil traf­fick­ing net­work that bankrolled the Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps and Hezbol­lah. It’s al­leged that the US forces seized the ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$100 mil­lion val­ued ship­ment af­ter it filled up. Pres­i­dent Trump said, “I as­sume we’re go­ing to keep the oil.”

The fol­low­ing day, the US Trea­sury’s OFAC sanc­tioned three of Maduro’s nephews, Pana­man­ian busi­ness­man Ra­mon Car­retero, six ship­ping com­pa­nies, and six more oil tankers. With the US gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment of the clo­sure of Venezue­lan air­space in No­vem­ber, its “Max­i­mum Pres­sure” cam­paign in­ten­si­fies even as Pres­i­dent Maduro sings and dances to crowds in a show of brava­do.

As much as the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion re­peats its “nar­co-ter­ror­ism” fight jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for its Maduro-cen­tric fo­cus, it still seized a laden oil tanker.

Many de­trac­tors have ar­gued that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is more about Venezuela’s world’s largest oil re­serves and much less about their in­volve­ment in nar­co­traf­fick­ing.

The VL­CC Skip­per’s car­ry­ing of a false Guyanese flag and its links to Iran, Cu­ba, and even Chi­na have pro­vid­ed suf­fi­cient mo­tive for con­fis­ca­tion by the Amer­i­cans. Will the oth­er sanc­tioned oil tankers be seized soon? Will they al­so be con­ve­nient­ly filled to the brim?

A few nau­ti­cal miles away, the re­cent­ly in­stalled radar sys­tem at Crown Point has been cred­it­ed with lo­cat­ing a ves­sel in the Ca­roni Swamp, which con­tained 1,560 kilo­grammes of “creepy mar­i­jua­na” val­ued at $171.2 mil­lion. Did the radar de­tect it while it was in mo­tion? Were our au­thor­i­ties too slow to cap­ture the boat’s op­er­a­tors? What will be­come of the mar­i­jua­na haul? Why didn’t the same radar de­tect the kid­nap­ping of the Tardieus from their home on Monos Is­land?

Some­body oth­er than Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der should an­swer these se­ri­ous ques­tions, or we risk such vis­i­ble con­ster­na­tion as that faced by re­porter Gyasi Gon­za­les last week.

Sun­day be­fore last, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s reded­i­ca­tion of the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal would have brought her mixed feel­ings. She high­light­ed the waste and mis­man­age­ment of $100 mil­lion in med­ical equip­ment by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment due to its de­lay in use and re-pur­pos­ing of the med­ical fa­cil­i­ty.

Hav­ing been a min­is­ter and Cou­va North MP in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment when we de­liv­ered the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal in 2015, I am dis­gust­ed by its po­lit­i­cal abuse. Was it re­venge for the non-open­ing of the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um back in 2010, when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship won the elec­tions? When par­ty pol­i­tics trumps good gov­er­nance, tax­pay­ers and their chil­dren suf­fer.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been ful­fill­ing cam­paign promis­es, and her Gov­ern­ment would have cal­cu­lat­ed its pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of Christ­mas pay­ments to around 80,000 Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers (with its pro-UNC ex­ec­u­tive) ahead of the set­tle­ments long signed by oth­er unions. The beg­ging bowls of unions like TTUTA, C&GW­TU, and AWU, which set­tled with the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment be­fore GE2025, are al­so held up by few­er hands.

My for­mer teach­ing col­leagues are com­plain­ing that even af­ter the new TTUTA ex­ec­u­tive se­cured an agree­ment from the CPO for their new salaries to be paid in Jan­u­ary, the in­creas­es in NIS de­duc­tions will re­duce their take-home pay. They are look­ing for­ward to their back­pay by March for some re­lief. How­ev­er, the Fi­nance Bill 2025 is def­i­nite­ly this Gov­ern­ment’s “sting in the tail” with such ter­rors as the land­lord sur­charge. I re­mem­bered when we cam­paigned suc­cess­ful­ly to “Axe the Tax” but now this bur­den will cer­tain­ly be passed down to ten­ants through rent in­creas­es.

The small­er land­lords will feel this new tax more, as it is cou­pled with a $2,500 reg­is­tra­tion fee. This tax should be sus­pend­ed un­til our na­tion­al eco­nom­ic out­look im­proves, or at least on­ly ap­plied in tiers to in­di­vid­ual land­lords in re­ceipt of to­tal rental in­come above, per­haps $10,000 a month. There are some “small peo­ple” whose on­ly in­come is a “small rent” from their heav­i­ly mort­gaged prop­er­ties, be­sides their oth­er ex­pens­es. A rental earn­ings tax cap will al­so en­cour­age land­lords to lim­bo un­der the thresh­old and thus keep rents low for low­er-in­come cit­i­zens.

Just eight months af­ter vot­ing for them, I was shocked to hear cit­i­zens who were bawl­ing “When UNC win, every­body win!” and “Yel­low is the code!” say­ing “One-term gov­ern­ment!” now. The Gov­ern­ment has cer­tain­ly been keen on keep­ing cer­tain cam­paign promis­es, but they come with a high cost on com­forts and se­cu­ri­ties, which were un­spo­ken on the cam­paign trail. Will they shore up their ap­proval rat­ings ahead of their first an­niver­sary?