Category Archives: Elections

Elections, General T&T

Our ‘lumpen intelligentsia’

By Raffique Shah
August 28, 2023

Raffique ShahIf Karl Marx were alive and still fighting to establish his elusive dream of a pure communist country, he might have been amused by a 21st-century phenomenon that he would have uproariously branded “the lumpen intelligentsia”. Of course, just about everyone so branded, and most who are not, will be equally lost. You see, the vocabulary nowadays has excised such words and terms as if their mere mention would leave a stain on them.

If you or I walked up to one-time die-hard communists such as Wade Mark, who was among a small band of Marxists who fought elections in 1981 but won hardly any votes, they’d likely tell you, “No, boy, ah doh do dat again.” So it’s left to a handful of us revolutionaries to at least keep the memories of another day alive, if not kicking.
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Elections, General T&T

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

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By Raffique Shah
June 26, 2023

Raffique ShahI am convinced that the problem with politics and governance in this country, the fact that we never seem to get it right, that having wavered between PNM in control for thirty consecutive years to the party losing in 1986 33-3 then complaining about every government having freely elected them, maybe we need to look at ourselves, not the politicians.
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Elections, General T&T, Opposition Party, Parliament, PNM, Property Tax, UNC

‘Informed’ voters will decide election

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By Raffique Shah
May 30, 2023

Raffique ShahNot for the first time in its 67-year history, the People’s National Movement goes into a local government election as the underdog. In 2019, as I recall it, the main opposition United National Congress, and some other parties with which it had forged alliances of sorts, seemed confident they would flog the PNM in the wake of a sluggish national economy, job cuts and its failure to secure support for local government reforms that intended to increase the powers of the municipal corporations.
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Court, Elections, General T&T, Law

GOVT LOSES AT PRIVY COUNCIL – ‘PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO VOTE’

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By Anna Ramdass
May 18, 2023 – trinidadexpress.com

ParliamentThe people of Trinidad and Tobago have a right to vote.

This was the loud and clear message from the Privy Council law Lords who delivered judgement against the Government’s decision to postpone the Local Government Elections and extend the life of councils for one year.
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Elections, General T&T, PNM, Politics, THA, Tobago

Manufacturing Dictators

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By Raffique Shah
March 06, 2023

Raffique ShahThe 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.
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Elections, General T&T, Labour, PNM, Politics, Russia, UNC

Show me your leader

By Raffique Shah
August 29, 2022

Raffique ShahIt’s not so much that we have little or nothing to celebrate on the 60th anniversary of our Independence from Britain, as so many who swear they are patriots, but whose patriotism swings with the pendulum of their political party’s fortunes, which almost always are linked to their personal fortunes.

It’s more that our democracy has been carved up into near-equal but uneven parts in such manner, to misquote Irish poet William Yeats in his near-prophetic masterpiece, “The Second Coming”, “…Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction/While the worst/Are full of passionate intensity…”
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Elections, General T&T, PNM, Politics, THA, Tobago

An unforgiving electorate

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By Raffique Shah
August 08, 2022

Raffique ShahContinuing where I ended last Sunday, by the turn of the millennium and the century, the Opposition United National Congress had positioned itself to capitalise on the vulnerabilities of the People’s National Movement, which had been weakened by the mass movement of 1970 (Black Power) that was driven largely by the children and grandchildren of the PNM.
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Elections, General T&T, Politics

The price of progress

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 25, 2022

A lecture given at The UWI History Fest 2022—April 20.

PART I

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI have been asked to speak about the “price of progress”, which the organisers of History Fest 2022 suggested should explore some aspects of the political formations of the pre-independence Trinidad and Tobago. While I am not too sure what the price of progress was, I can try to point out a few signposts along that journey and offer a few personal reflections on them.
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Elections, General T&T, PDP, PNM, Politics, THA, Tobago

Move Satan move

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 04, 2022

“You may know the man by the conversation he keeps.”

—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOur Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley, is reputed to have said to US President Joe Biden that the salient factor in our democracy is his capacity to listen to the opinions of his people. I hope he meant that he listened not only to what they say loudly and directly, but also to what isn’t said aloud but is equally as pertinent.

This is important: the Prime Minister’s success in office over the next four years depends upon his listening not only to what is said directly, but also to what is communicated silently.
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Elections, PDP, PNM, Politics, THA, Tobago

One-half apology to Farley

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By Raffique Shah
December 13, 2021

Raffique ShahOkay, I am prepared to give the new governor of Tobago one-half an apology for writing last week that he is a fool. “Be nice to the young man, nah… he trying to put together an energetic team to first salvage, then turn around the island’s economy…”

I gather as much, I responded, listening to him speak… But you and I know talk is cheap and promises even cheaper… until we see hard evidence of his performance, I shall stick with the half-apology.
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