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If one thinks of the month of Ju­ly as a book, then the fall­out from the Gov­ern­ment’s abrupt can­cel­la­tion of con­tracts un­der the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) in June would be the main char­ac­ter.

The State of Emer­gency would be a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter, and the ar­rival of In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di would make a guest ap­pear­ance. Oth­er no­table cast­ings in­clud­ed pris­on­ers claim­ing death plots against them, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young be­ing stripped of his pen­sion and po­lice pro­tec­tion and De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge ad­vis­ing home­own­ers to shoot and kill first, even shoot­ing home in­vaders in the back.

The Gov­ern­ment’s late-June de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate the con­tracts of over 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors na­tion­wide cre­at­ed im­me­di­ate, wide­spread up­heaval. The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) swift­ly con­demned the ac­tion, al­leg­ing it had uni­lat­er­al­ly dis­placed more than 10,500 work­ers, cast­ing them in­to un­ex­pect­ed un­em­ploy­ment overnight.