By Raffique Shah
February 28, 2026

I do not know if Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has worked out a plan on how she proposes to write her name in history. Ordinarily, the nature of politics and political rule in the top Caribbean countries, in the region’s relatively short time in global history (600 years recorded since the arrival of the Europeans), does not leave much room for ambitious political figures to write their names as is prevalent in countries whose dated history may be as many as twice that number.
Continue reading PM chases power’s crooked shadow →

By Raffique Shah
February 21, 2026

As they evolve, technologies that we see as wondrous little devices make our lives easier, safer, better. Our elders first benefited from these devices when ideas that we had explored for decades, nay, for centuries, opened windows of opportunities, in instances decades after man first ­explored them.

I don’t know when, for example, man first discovered that he could fly. Yes, fly. ­Imagine, if you would, primitive man perched on a tree’s branch, maybe as a human being or as a bird or insect—and through generations, took the thought of flying from a physical manifestation of a motorised vehicle or aircraft that he was probably daydreaming of when a helicopter-like vehicle embedded ­itself in his brain.
Continue reading So much for a peaceful Caribbean →

By Raffique Shah
February 14, 2026

I don’t know why the average person who gets drawn into conversation or argument withdraws into the safety net of the age-old boundaries of song and dance, and revelry and scholarly epistles. The educated among us are the first to shelter behind banality as they pretend to know much about art forms that, in truth, they know little of.
Continue reading You cannot legislate culture →

By Raffique Shah
January 24, 2026

For sake of country, more than people, I keep hoping the portents of an economic meltdown that stand menacingly watching at Trinidad and Tobago will attempt for yet another time in its history to stave off the doom and gloom that threaten.

In my time, at my age (I’m approaching 80), I have seen God or whatever deity people worship smile at this cussed country and spare us the hardships, gore and misery that other countries face year after year. In my time, born in 1946 as I was, I have watched Trinis “wine” through hurricane, earthquakes, fire, floods and worse, while our neighbours up the Caribbean Sea, in Latin and North America, are bullied and beaten as they face the wrath of God or whoever else directs the show.
Continue reading Country over the unpatriotic →

By Raffique Shah
January 17, 2026

The first time I intervened in Tobago’s politics was in their first Tobago House of Assembly election in 1980. In my innocence, I thought it was a harmless gesture that should have offended no one. This was the latest attempt at constitutional change that should have given the island a greater degree of autonomy, much like self-government.

In the earlier 1976 general election for Trinidad and Tobago, we had reached an agreement of sorts with ANR Robinson’s Democratic Action Congress (DAC) to not contest the two Tobago seats. However, we felt it was necessary that we have a presence in the sister isle.
Continue reading No war over Tobago →