Slinger Francisco, the Mighty Sparrow, died in New York on September 27. Grenada-born, Trinidad-raised, Brooklyn-based for most of his final decades, he spent seventy-seven years making the Caribbean listen to itself. The voice that would have known what to make of the past political week is gone.
The Special Operations Bill passed at 1:30 AM on Republic Day, on the Senate President's casting vote, against unanimous Independent and Opposition opposition. Later that day, President Kangaloo warned that "rights surrendered in anxious times are not always easily recovered."
Trinidad and Tobago has spent ten of the past fourteen months under emergency powers. The current State of Emergency ends tomorrow. The Government is bringing back the same ZOSO Bill that failed in the Senate in January. The Senate numbers have not changed. Neither has the pattern.
A Trinidadian scientist has spent seven years turning a Caribbean environmental crisis into fuel. The region has been quietly figuring this out together, without needing Washington's permission or foreign firms taking the value. Trinidad and Tobago now needs to get on board.
Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo were killed by a US missile on October 14, 2025, returning home to Las Cuevas from Venezuela. Their families are suing the US in a Boston federal court. Their Prime Minister has said there is no evidence Trinidadians were killed. This is what happened.
In ten days this month, BP has consolidated three major gas deals in Trinidad and Tobago, covering some 15 trillion cubic feet. Every one depends on OFAC in Washington continuing to permit it, and that permission has been withdrawn once already. The deals are real. The dependency is also fragile.
The Government has signed MOUs for up to 800MW of AI data centres with two US firms. The environmental critique is correct. It is also not the whole picture. The bigger question is what kind of economy the country is choosing to build, and whether it looks a lot like the one we already have.
The 39th Tobago Heritage Festival opened on Thursday. Fifteen days, eighteen villages, a wedding from 1798, a riot from 1876, cocoa dancing to a tambrin band. Small islands still tell their own stories, and it is worth celebrating that.
On Tuesday, Justice Frank Seepersad dismissed the Hadeeds' habeas corpus application. He also said, in the same ruling, that a State of Emergency cannot eclipse the rule of law. Both sentences now belong to the country, and both deserve careful reading.
On Thursday, the Law Association finally spoke. The same week, the country's most prominent businessman was arrested with no charges, no information, no transparency. The pattern this blog has been documenting now has both an institutional witness and a fresh example of it in motion.
On Thursday, the Government formally legislated the path back to a working Petrotrin refinery. The bill passed with no opposing votes. Whatever else is happening this month, this is a manifesto pledge becoming law. What the country needs to know now is what comes after the legislation.
The SoE was extended at 12.27am on Thursday. The Mid-year Review will hand out the salary money tomorrow. Between the two, the AG said the alternative to extending was Haiti, and the Public Utilities Minister called the nurses racist. This is not conversation. It is rhetoric in place of one.
A Trinidadian writer's prize-winning short story has been flagged by AI detectors as machine-written. He denies it. The detection science is contested. The Foundation backs him. The truth in this case may be unknowable – but the bigger question is not, and Caribbean writers must talk about it.
The State of Emergency lapses at midnight on June 17. In the meantime: a protest order, a DPP warning, thirteen unions threatening a constitutional challenge, and a Prime Minister who will not back down. Nine days to decide what we want this country to be.
Fifteen no-protest zones, signed by the Police Commissioner the same day riot police arrested a grieving best friend at a vigil. We have been asking for weeks what the State of Emergency was actually for. This week we got the answer in writing.
An opposition MP in Jamaica opened her speech on culture in the language most Jamaicans actually speak. The Speaker shut her down within seconds. It happened in Kingston, but every Trini who has ever code-switched at an immigration desk knows exactly what it felt like.
The AG told Parliament a gang member triggered enhanced protection for MPs. The Police Commissioner backed him up. Parliamentary security, government senators and the Opposition say they never heard about it. For a claim that will be used to justify policy, the country needs more than "trust us."
Kes The Band's NPR Tiny Desk concert was not just a good gig. It was the kind of soft power we usually only talk about when we are losing it. Pair it with the laptops and prosthetics from India last week, and you start to see what punching above our weight actually looks like.
A 23-month-old is dead in Belmont, the Defence Minister calls it a reprisal, and the same ZOSO Bill that collapsed in the Senate weeks ago is being brought back. Before we vote it through this time, someone has to explain what changed about the answer – or whether we are just recycling it.
The UNC in Power, One Year Review
A seven-part audit of the UNC government's first year. Genuine wins on jobs, pensions and paediatric care sit beside an Auditor General's qualified opinion, a collapsed security bill, a nurses' walkout, and Trinidadian fishermen killed in US strikes our government endorsed.
While the nursing dispute dominates the news, three premature triplets – the smallest ever delivered in T&T – went home from a Port of Spain NICU last week. The Health Minister also unveiled plans for a national prosthetics centre. Two reminders of what our health workers can do.
T&T's nurses are now enforcing a 1:6 patient ratio – a policy the government approved but never implemented. The Health Minister says there is no health crisis. With nurses still on 2013 salaries and a brain drain in motion, the bill for years of austerity is coming due.
On April 19, Acting Corporal Anuska Eversley was murdered inside her own police station. The armoury was emptied. Three men, including a serving officer, are now charged. This isn't a security failure - it is an institutional one, and the warning signs were there for months.
The April 23 announcement was bigger than the headlines suggested - bus tickets, pension grants, a national eKYC platform and a free WhatsApp AI assistant all at once. The direction is right. The execution has to reach the people who need it most.