Category Archives: UNC

General T&T, Hinduism, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, Religion, UNC

Calcuttising Sat’s Message To Tobagonians

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By Stephen Kangal
May 01, 2019

Stephen KangalIt is patently clear that Prime Minister Rowley grabbed the quite innocuous, viewed from a local context, but attention-attracting Sat Statement and attempted to clothe it with the now infamous Calcutta Ship robes geared to arrest the declining support for the PNM in Tobago from the rise and rise of the Duke factor.

It was engineered to achieve the same electoral result as Sandy’s 2013 Statement and to nip the incipient electoral fortunes of Minority Leader Watson Duke in the bud.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, Religion, UNC

Vilifying the Messenger of Tobago Productivity Message

By Stephen Kangal
April 23, 2019

Stephen KangalThe comments of Sat Maharaj on poor productivity practices that stultify and retard the economic development of Tobago including its current justification for exercising greater autonomy were substantially no different from those uttered by Dr Rita Pemberton, THA Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles and Tobago East MP the Hon Ayana Webster- Roy. In fact Mr Maharaj in his well-known, call a spade a spade modus operandi was using language derived directly from the work ethic statements issued by these Tobagonian speakers recently.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Recession, UNC

The Dog and the Bone

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 22, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOver the past year, Ralph Maraj, a fellow columnist, has been a tick in PNM’s behind. He isn’t always wrong in his commentaries—even a broken clock is correct at least twice a day—but his obsessive fascination with PNM’s failures leads one to question his objectivity and the distorting lens of his overwrought rhetoric.

Last Sunday he listed everything PNM has done wrong during its tenure and why he is heartened by UNC’s plans as it prepares to govern from 2020.
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corruption, General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Beware: nasty election campaigns ahead

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By Raffique Shah
March 20, 2019

Raffique ShahIf you thought that Vernella Alleyne-Toppin had plumbed the depth of depravity when, in the run-up to the 2015 general election, the then Tobago East MP launched the most scurrilous, vulgar attack on People’s National Movement leader Dr Keith Rowley, believe me, you haven’t seen the nastiest political campaigning yet.

Alleyne-Toppin had been allowed by House Speaker Wade Mark all the time she needed to allege that Rowley was a biological product of rape, and that he, in turn, would later end up committing the heinous crime to father a son. The alleged victims openly denied Toppin’s baseless charges, which were read into Hansard in the presence of her political leader, then Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and other People’s Partnership parliamentary colleagues, none of whom intervened to stop the nastiness.
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General T&T, International, PNM, Politics, UNC, USA, Venezuela

Kamla’s Position on Venezuela Ascended the High Moral Ground

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By Stephen Kangal
March 09, 2019

Stephen KangalIn the face of rapidly unfolding political and diplomatic events globally and the current isolation of T&T for its ill-advised decision to recognize unwittingly and side with the internationally denounced illegal and illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro bilaterally while pursuing a contradictory neutrality/ non-interference position at the multilateral Caricom and UN levels, it appears to me that Kamla outwitted Prime Minister Rowley in her strategic support for Interim President Juan Guaido.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, UNC

While I Am Here!

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 25, 2019

“Until all races see each other as brothers and sisters and not as competitors or enemies Trinidad and Tobago is not going to move forward.”

—Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI congratulate the Hon. Kamla Persad-Bissessar for the brave speech on race relations in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) that she delivered on Monday, February 11. While I do not agree totally with the accuracy of her “short history lesson,” thinking in and of the future is much more important than being mired in the commess of the present. Demeaning Persad-Bissessar’s important insights by castigating the probity of her having Malone Hughes, a brother who was charged and fined several times , on her platform does a disservice to a brilliant analysis of our present condition. It reduces a pressing existentialist issue to a misguided rant about non-sense.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Periscope on upcoming national elections

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By Raffique Shah
February 12, 2019

Raffique ShahEven as the crisis in neighbouring Venezuela remains volatile, with the threat of civil war looming large just beyond our horizon, politicians in Trinidad and Tobago are pressing ahead with preparations for their own political wars—local government elections due to be held later this year and a general election before the end of next year.

Elections in Trinidad and Tobago are driven by one core issue: when the People’s National Movement holds power, as it does now, how to remove it from office. Or when it’s out in the wilderness of opposition, how to keep it there. Nothing more, nothing less.
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General T&T, International, PNM, Politics, UNC, USA, Venezuela

Using Parliamentary Time to Humiliate the USA

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By Stephen Kangal
February 11, 2019

Stephen KangalI am getting the impression that although we are mere seven miles from Venezuela, have potential energy interests there to safeguard and cultivate we also have even more compelling economic, technical co-operation and diasporic interests within the USA that is in fact our largest trading partner and source of actual and promising huge investment prospects.

Why is T&T giving undue precedence to propping up illegitimate and dictatorial Maduro and humiliating the USA in our current foreign policy posturing?
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corruption, General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Society steeped in corruption

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By Raffique Shah
January 16, 2019

Raffique ShahSometime in 2017, I wrote a column in which I counselled Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley to refrain from hurling allegations of corruption against ministers and senior officials of the People’s Partnership Government unless or until such time as some them have been charged with serious corruption-related criminal offences.

By then, I had reasoned, most citizens had grown fed up with such allegations being made by parties in power and those in opposition, with no proof produced as they exchanged places every five years from 1986 when the People’s National Movement was first voted out of office after a 30-year grip on power. The average person knew or believed there was rampant corruption involving PNM ministers, and the overwhelming vote they gave the National Alliance for Reconstruction was fuelled by expectations that they would finally see “big sawatees” hauled before the courts in handcuffs, with many of the crooks ending up behind bars like the common criminals they were.
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Crime in T&T, PNM, UNC

Media trapped by trivia

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By Raffique Shah
December 19, 2018

Raffique ShahFor a country that is beset by myriad fundamental problems—real, imagined or contrived—it is amazing how easily the entire nation can be distracted by trivia.

Almost as side issues in the media, two senior politicians square off over what percentage of employed persons earn less than $6,000 per month, the benchmark for bare survival; hardly mentioned are the 10,000 or so workers who have been thrown on the breadline for the year. The national debt rises higher than Mt Cerro del Aripo; the murder toll crosses 500; and potholes on our roads exceed properly-paved driving surfaces, are all relegated to lower-ranked media attention.
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