By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 08, 2025

Blissfully, the Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow will soon relieve us of our miseries. Unfortunately, he leaves his clones behind who know not what they say or do. Chief among them are Faris Al-Rawi, a former attorney general, and Stuart Young, our first unelected prime minister.

Al-Rawi complimented the Leader recently for “his policy initiatives and actions, which he said were critical in stabilising the oil and gas sector in Trinidad and Tobago. He also complimented Young for his measured approach to the imminent change in leadership”. (Express, February 27.) I am not sure what that last sentence means.

Al-Rawi continued: “He has certainly laid a track [I wonder if he meant ‘laid a trap’] which is taking us to an organised outcome of yielding a new prime minister under the constitutional arrangements by which we are governed.” Al-Rawi could not have anticipated President Donald Trump shutting the door on T&T’s economic arrangements with Maduro’s government.

It is plausible that Al-Rawi did not know that T&T had entered into an arrangement that paid Maduro’s government “royalty, a special commission of 5 percent, surface tax and social contributions totalling US$1 million, and a confidential signing bonus”. (Express, February 27, 2025.)

However, he was aware that the Leader breached PNM’s party rules regarding Young’s selection as prospective prime minister. Yet he boasts that the Leader’s arbitrary postponement of the PNM’s national convention and subsequent selection of Young as prime minister are among the Leader’s prized political achievements.

Al-Rawi also advanced this verbiage to support the culmination of the Leader’s “excellent run”, saying: “I am acutely aware that the PNM is very conscious that it must demonstrate the policies and, more particularly, actions which are deserving of a third term in office…I am excited and motivated to get out and win the next general election.”

The same day Al-Rawi extolled the Leader’s genius, the Leader wrote on his Facebook page that Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar is “a hateful woman” and “unpatriotic” for criticising Maduro.

He ramajayed: “This ill-advised, direct attack on the Maduro government is an attempt to provoke them [Venezuela] to scuttle any favourable dealing with Trinidad and Tobago and is a call to the US government to take action against Venezuela, knowing any such action by the US is likely to damage or destroy the current arrangements upon which Trinidad and Tobago depends for future gas supplies. How unpatriotic can this cabal get?” (Express, February 28.)

This is a nasty form of gaslighting. Does the Leader not understand that it is evil (to use his words) to engage in any form of emotional abuse that may cause the people whom he serves to doubt their own thoughts and question their sanity? Trump was not waiting on Persad-Bissessar’s signals to take action against Maduro’s government, nor does he care what Al-Rawi, Young or the Leader says. These people are irrelevant to him.

It is also disingenuous of Young to promise that the “gas supply expected by 2027 would help secure foreign exchange, pay the country’s bills, and ensure adequate health care” when last week Trump cancelled Chevron’s licence “to pump oil from Venezuela and gave the company one month to exit operations”. (Financial Times, March 7.)

Young also said: “I can assure the people of T&T, both in my current…and future roles, that I will fight for the country. I will do everything I can to advocate for T&T, regardless of what happens.” Trump’s action against Chevron reduces Young’s resolve to meaningless garbage.

In analysing the relationship among British PM Keir Starmer, the UK government and Trump, Robert Shrimsley remarked: “Heroic talk abounds…For all the emphasis we place on individual leaders, they are still bound by economic and diplomatic realities. A newly daring Starmer does not make the UK richer nor able to suddenly stand against a capricious US.” (Financial Times, February 27.)

The Leader and his minions are living in a time warp. It prevents them from understanding Trump’s capricious approach to US national and international affairs.

In 1655 France’s King Louis XIV told his Parliament: “L’Etat, c’est moi [I am the State].” Edward Luce says Trump changed that dictum into: “The state—it’s me and Elon for now.” We are witnessing the transformation of a democracy into an emerging oligarchy in the US.

One way to respond to the “absolute foolishness” of the Leader and his minions is to remind them of Eric Williams’ observation in “Massa Day Done”. He said: “[T&T’s] population of today is far too alert and sophisticated to fall for any such claptrap…It was the Guardian I attacked for its slave mentality.”

Isn’t it time PNM leaders renounce their backward thinking and obtuse rationalisations and move thoughtfully into the second quarter of the 21st century?