IT’S SAFE to assume that when citizens of a republic elected a new government in April 2025, they did not sign up for a masterclass in authoritarian puppetry. Yet, here we are. There are, however, many parallels between the crumbling democratic facades of our neighbors and the creeping rot in Trinidad and Tobago.
We look at Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro with a mix of pity and horror a leader who dismantles opposition by silencing dissent. But if the latest missive from the Ministry of Homeland Security is to be believed, we are barreling towards that same reckoning. We do not want to be like Maduro, yet the actions of Minister Roger Alexander suggest we are eagerly following his playbook, albeit with a uniquely Trinidadian twist of incompetence.
The revelation that a sitting Minister has petitioned the United States Embassy to revoke the visas of US-based critics almost beggars’ belief. It is a stunning display of the “life-in-the-mirror dimension” where our officials believe their jurisdiction extends to the suburbs of Miami and Queens.
The Minister’s logic if one can call it that is that Youtubers and “dual nationals” are destabilizing the country. This prime and primal directive allows him to externalize his own failures. If the public panicked on October 31st, it wasn’t because of a vacuum of credible leadership; no, it was because of a guy with a webcam in Brooklyn.
This is the behavior of a man working in a dangerous silo. He believes that by cutting out the tongues of critics abroad, he can cure the deafness of the administration at home. It is a meticulous strategy to weaponize “sovereignty” against the very people the government is sworn to protect. If you can’t govern them, silence them.
The 10,000-strong mob of online commentators is not the enemy; they are the symptom of a populace starved of truth. By asking a foreign power to police Trinidadian speech, the Minister has effectively admitted that our own democratic institutions are too weak to withstand criticism. We will not be better off than Maduro if we allow this. In fact, we will be worse: a dictatorship outsourced to a foreign embassy.
One has to ask if the goodly Minister is acting alone, lost in his own feverish efforts to control the narrative, or if this is the new policy of the state.
We must turn our eyes to the Prime Minister. Supporters and critics alike are now conscripted into a waiting game. We know she has the wisdom to see this for what it is a corrosive overreach that threatens the very fabric of our republic. But does she have the strength to condemn it?
If she remains silent, she validates the silo. She confirms that the “politics of division” is now the law of the land. We hope for a rebuke, for a reassertion of democratic principles. But in a country where moral principles are often thrown into the long grass to suit self-interest, hope is a dangerous thing.
Unless she acts, the “Crazies” won’t be the ones on social media; they will be the ones sitting in the Cabinet, dismantling our rights one visa request at a time.
