By Raffique Shah
Sunday, December 23rd 2007
The voice of the people, we are often reminded, is the voice of God. My rejoinder to this scriptural interpretation of democracy is: the masses so often prove to be asses, one wonders if God has any influence in secular matters like elections, party affiliations, and worst of all, in leaders people choose to anoint or lionise. Six weeks ago close to 200,000 Trinidadians chose Basdeo Panday and the UNC to represent them in Parliament. In fact, a few years ago twice that many among the electorate not only voted him into power, but hoisted him on their shoulders as Prime Minister and paraded him as a lion-king, exemplar supreme.
Continue reading ‘How fortunate for leaders that men do not think’
My mother used to say, “The more you live; the more you see.” She was correct. I never thought I would live to see the day when the Prime Minister of our country, at the opening of Parliament, offer his hand in friendship and camaraderie to the Leader of the Opposition, only to have the latter shake his hand and then wipe off the handshake with his handkerchief as if to say “I will to have nothing to do with you or this deliberative body.”
In a crafty surgical strike designed to stem the upward political mobility of Winston Dookeran and political emergence of Anand Ramlogan, the master puppeteer has resurrected Ramesh from the proverbial political cemetery in which he interned him after the 18-18 tie, 2001 general elections. The predictably blind and politically naive of his declining UNC base supports this resuscitation even though he was stigmatised as the great betrayer.
Imagine, if you will, the execution last week of a 20-year-old Iranian whose family was told to “collect the body”, the first they would learn of their son’s sharia-decreed death. 
I want to support 
After undertaking one year of extensive mobilisation against the ingrained forces of political tribalism and maximum leadership styles both of which are deeply embedded in and have determined the contours of T&T politics for the past 52 years, the COP has now achieved 50% of its stated mission on the road to introducing caring, enlightened, issues-based and people-centred and driven politics in T&T under a style of new politics.