By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 13, 2023
PART III
Walton Look Lai has written an indispensable book about the life of Eugene Chen and the important role he played in Chinese history between the 1920s and 1940s, the full flowering of Chen’s career. Chen, a shrewd diplomat, possessed a superior command of the English language which he used as a weapon against his internal antagonists within the party and external foes.
Continue reading Eugene Chen: a forgotten Trinidadian
By Raffique Shah
March 13, 2023
Surely, we deserved better than that, Leila sighed audibly as she aside the device on which she had been reading a news report. I thought I knew what report it was, but I felt in the baiting mood, so I asked ‘What are you upset over? Who deserved better?’
‘I’m talking about the twenty year old corruption matter involving the state vs Basdeo Panday and others. The state under which heading the DPP must fall, withdrew one of the corruption matters yesterday.’
Continue reading Wuss dan dat
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 06, 2023
PART II
Between 1921 and 1925, the year of Sun Yat-sen’s death, Eugene Chen was on top of his game. He was described as “Sun Yat-sen’s personal representative and spokesman in Shanghai” while the US Consul General in Shanghai described him as “one of the ablest, if not the most able, of Chinese political writers”. (Look Lai, West Meets East.)
Continue reading Eugene Chen: a forgotten Trinidadian
By Raffique Shah
March 06, 2023
The dizzying pace at which politicians who have promoted themselves as contenders for top positions in government, see things fall apart around them, is an ominous collapse of a political system that seems to have been built to secure the ruling elites. The relics of a post-colonial era that guaranteed the grandchildren of the favoured ones is being battered every-which-way leaving many of them who now hold strategic positions in governments, unsure of their future, and quite likely afraid of what tomorrow may bring.
Continue reading Manufacturing Dictators
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 27, 2023
PART I
In 1944, when news reached Trinidad that Eugene Chen had died from neurasthenia in China, Chien Chiao (the Chinese homonym for Trinidad), a Trinidad Chinese community journal, made the following announcement: “Eugene Chen (1879(sic)-1944), Trinidad’s greatest son and for many years Chinese Foreign Minister, died from a heart attack in Shanghai this year. Born of humble parentage in San Fernando, he practiced as a solicitor in the courts of the colony before going abroad.” (December 1944).
Continue reading Eugene Chen: a forgotten Trinidadian
By Raffique Shah
February 27, 2023
If anyone in the country was surprised by the minimalist style that almost all the designers opted for in outfitting female masqueraders, such poor folks have either detached themselves from Carnival for some time, or ceased to be bothered by the near nakedness of thousands of adults, whose gyrations and simulations of sex, could one day erupt into an orgasmic explosion, the effects of which might send some uncontrollable individuals into uncharted dimensions, something akin to never-ending euphoria on steroids.
Continue reading Porning our Carnival
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 20, 2023
A few days ago, businessman Inshan Ishmael issued a pre-action protocol letter to Cro Cro (Weston Rawlins). He demands Cro Cro respond favourably to his letter within the next 28 days or face legal action in the High Court. Ishmael says he is the subject of Cro Cro’s calypso, “Another Sat Is Outside Again”.
Attorney Richard Jaggasar, Ishmael’s lawyer, says, “In the trial it will be contended that it was immaterial whether Cro Cro intended to cause harm or was careless in making his statements, as the tort of defamation is one of strict liability.” (Express, February 14.)
Continue reading Cro Cro: our warrior king
By Raffique Shah
February 20, 2023
As someone who has long advocated the dismantling of over-generous subsidies for a number of goods and services, many readers may find my change in position opportunistic, and proceed to lump me with politicians who thrive on hollow rhetoric such as “freedom for the masses”, even the more vacuous slogan, “freeness for the masses”.
These are flights of fancy that the younger among my generation when our larger-than-life giants like Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Patrice Lumumba and Malcolm X walked among us, preaching revolution through which we would establish an egalitarian world.
Continue reading Go softly on utility rates
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 13, 2023
Businessman Inshan Ishmael plans to take Cro Cro (Weston Rawlins) to court over what he says are Cro Cro’s “highly defamatory lyrics about him” in his (Rawlins’) 2023 calypso, “Another Sat is Outside Again”. He says that he never listens to Cro Cro’s calypsoes because they always denigrate the East Indian community. This time, he is really offended.
Continue reading Defending our noble art form
By Raffique Shah
February 13, 2023
Every year, ritually, come Carnival, steel pans and drums rescued from the paws of scrap-metal hustlers hunting for a few dollars, or rust that’s threatening to render them useless, join hundreds of cellos, bass and retired hubcaps from derelict motor vehicles, coming together to treat music lovers with the most scintillating sounds and songs that could allow the “mad blood” in all of us to enjoy “we music”.
Continue reading There is hope yet for pan