By Raffique Shah
April 25, 2026

A society, once ungoverned, lawless and without a leader, is painted as an anarchical one. What do you call a society governed by an elected government by the people, for the people and of the people that has allowed crime to run away so far that the criminals are now killing police officers in police stations, and stealing their arms and armaments from their armoury?

Last Sunday’s King’s Wharf incident can only be described as anarchy. The fact that someone killed a woman police officer inside the police station and made off with the arms and ammunition is simply mind-boggling. Who is or are the brave or stupid—depending on your point of view—individual or persons who would have perpetrated this heinous crime? And, that, while the country is under a state of emergency which was instituted to help curb crime. Charges have been laid and we await confirmation of the accusations made against the deceased officer herself.
Continue reading One step away from anarchy →

By Raffique Shah
April 18, 2026

As a survivor of several economic recessions, more economic downturns than I could count as a child, I’ve had to tighten my belt so much that my waistline simply doesn’t exist anymore. When I make my not-too-often rides into the countryside, evidence of citizens experiencing tough economic times is there. Construction seems to have slowed down considerably and the presence of working-age young adults on the streets, just idling away the time, is painful to watch.
Continue reading Nonsense passes for governance →

By Raffique Shah
April 05, 2026

It would seem preposterous if any nation that is involved in US President Donald Trump’s fantasy warfare (in which the carnage is impossibly real) were to pronounce victory.

Or even more absurd would be claims of having devastated and dismantled what was left of the camp that Palestinians were forced to call home, because the rubble left behind by Israel’s constant bombardment of Gaza cannot be called anything but camps in the Bedouin tradition. Still, since Trump appeared to be enjoying the puerile digital war, one cannot dismiss his sharing of digital targets for practice on live ranges with equally live targets.
Continue reading Sowing the seeds of war →

By Raffique Shah
March 28, 2026

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire, a Marxist educator of yesteryear, wrote that education should be a practice of freedom, empowering the oppressed to achieve critical consciousness and transform society.

With this transformation, I suppose he dared to engender a society so far removed from ignorance that there would be no chance of large swathes of the world wallowing in abject poverty where crime remains a foremost option.
Continue reading Capital nonsense →

By Raffique Shah
March 14, 2026

We citizens—I think I can safely say the majority among us—have never given up fighting crime. We never needed any special crime plan. If various pieces of legislation govern the protective services and other institutions, armed forces, Prison Service and the Judiciary in its broadest sense, then why do we need any plan to fight crime?

By simply enforcing the existing laws, those we have been governed by for over a century, we should have complete control over crime. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Even simpler are the laws that govern the everyday functioning of the society with an existing population of just over 1.5 million.
Continue reading Crime soars, justice in a mess →

By Raffique Shah
March 08, 2026

Since everybody who is anybody who has worn a uniform—matters not what arm of the protective services he or she attempted to serve in—has offered advice to every new administration, I felt it incumbent on me to throw in my ten cents’ worth of advice to the beleaguered anti-crime Government that seems to be spinning top in mud, going nowhere, faster or slower.

I can boast that my qualifications for ­offering advice on matters of security date back to when the top cop of the day wore short pants, carried club-like batons, and looked every inch the fearsome badjohn. He had sobriquets, such as the infamous Bag-ah-Lion.
Continue reading Government by the unfit →

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 →