Mrs Howe allowed me four days' home leave to visit my sister and brothers in Trinidad. I left a reasonably stable Barbados, where thousands of tourists are at ease, to experience quite the opposite.

Earlier this month I wrote that Basdeo Panday, Trinidad and Tobago's former prime minister, now leader of the opposition, had been jailed for two years for failing to declare income - including TT$1.2m (£119,000) from Lawrence Duprey, a billionaire businessman. Panday is out on bail and back on the campaign trail - determined, it seems, to throw the institutions of state into crisis and disrepute. He has alleged that the chief magistrate who sentenced him received millions from the sale of a plot of land owned by Duprey, who was his chief witness. He is implying that the chief magistrate canvassed the sale for an exorbitant sum as a bribe for dismissing the charge against Duprey. Meanwhile, we gather that the chief justice summoned the magistrate in question to upbraid him over what was at least a vulgar indiscretion.

There is more. The chief magistrate accused the chief justice of attempting to pervert the course of justice by demanding that he acquit Panday on what appear to be dubious grounds. The current premier, Patrick Manning, then advanced a separate impeachment process against the chief justice, who in turn filed for a judicial review against the attorney general. And while the police seized documents from the chief justice's chambers on the instruction of the attorney general, the Criminal Bar Association questioned the attorney general's competence.

Last but not least, an affidavit sworn by a man named Vernon Paul fell into my hands. It details how he, along with leading members of the party now in power, imported firearms, cocaine and ammunition, with the intention of planting these on two opposition MPs just before the last election.

All this mess is being displayed to the public in the name of justice. It seems to me that the protagonists are quite unaware of the extent to which they are damaging this fragile, young modern state.