By Letters to the Editor
August 09, 2020 – wired868.com
Naila Ramsaran: ‘Let us the hardworking UNC supporters continue to pay taxes and mind the loafers that support the PNM… I hope [Prime Minister Dr Keith] Rowley starts putting contraceptives in their water supply yes because these cockroaches keep populating and the only thing they know to do is vote…’
Continue reading ‘These PNM cockroaches keep populating’; Ramsaran’s racist rant
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 10, 2020
I have been a political activist and newspaper columnist for the past forty-five years. I have written for many newspapers including the New York Amsterdam News, the New York Tribune, the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Baltimore Sun. I have never been subjected to as many invectives that I have received over my decision to support the UNC in this election.
Continue reading A Time for Forgiveness and Rejuvenation
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 04, 2020
In 1955 when I was growing up in Tacarigua Michael Kangalee, who lived in El Dorado, a nearby village, was one of my best friends. We attended Tacarigua A. C. School and were members of the St. Mary’s Anglican Church. As soon as the People’s National Movement (PNM) and the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) came into being we were forced to take sides. I supported the PNM and Michael supported the DLP.
Continue reading Why I Support UNC This Time Around
By Raffique Shah
August 03, 2020
Eight days from today, Kamla Persad-Bissessar expects to be named Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago after she leads the United National Congress to victory in the general election, Hers is a legitimate expectation, and she has as good a chance as Dr Keith Rowley, the incumbent office-holder and leader of the People’s National Movement. In fact, she could make history being the only female to win a second term as Prime Minister, to add to her already impressive career as a politician.
Continue reading Making of a megalomaniac
By Raffique Shah
July 27, 2020
It would be remiss of me if, having chosen to comment on the 2020 general election, I ignored the many small parties and independent candidates that have entered the race. The Elections and Boundaries Commission said 150 candidates from 19 parties are set to do battle in 41 constituencies on August 10. Between the PNM and the UNC, they have fielded 80 candidates (41 and 39 respectively), while the new Progressive Empowerment Party has 28 candidates. This means that the other 16 parties and independents will have 42 starters when the polls open.
Continue reading New prospects for small parties
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 21, 2020
I have been following the “the polytricks” taking place in Guyana, a land that “has been a torn and tortured terrain with divisive seeds sown in the colonial waters” as Sir Hilary Beckles described it (Express, July 13.) It’s not an overreach to say we are witnessing a replay of a traumatic encounter that took place years ago.
In 1970 Forbes Burnham declared Guyana a Co-operative Republic. I visited Guyana in 1972, the year in which the first Carifesta and the Non-Aligned Nations’ conference took place under the aegis of Comrade-Leader Burnham. It was a new and exciting time.
Continue reading Making a Truce with Reality
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 13, 2020
I met Sophia Chote once but was enchanted her intellectual sophistication and emotional maturity of her columns. Her writing reminded me of the qualities that one found in the thinkers of the romantic movement of the nineteenth century: a belief in democracy and republicanism; an appreciation for the sublime and transcendence; and most of all, a belief in the power of imagination.
Continue reading The Last of the Romantics
By Raffique Shah
July 13, 2020
I don’t know why Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar thought it necessary to appeal to Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley to invite a team of observers from The British Commonwealth and/or CARICOM to witness the conduct of the general election that will take place on August 10. All elections in the history of independent Trinidad and Tobago have been conducted by the Elections and Boundaries Commission, a creature of the Constitution, and there was hardly an occasion on which there were allegations of irregularities. Indeed, not only is the EBC seen to be fair and fiercely independent, but it hardly ever erred in an election, and even when it did, its actions were not deemed partisan or corrupt.
Continue reading Much ado about nothing
By Raffique Shah
July 06, 2020
It is perhaps a measure of poetic justice that a People’s National Movement government is facing a rebellion by elements in the party’s core constituencies in the capital city of Port of Spain and its environs, that on the eve of an important general election when the party needs its members more than they need the party. But such are the vicissitudes of politics that test the mettle of leaders.
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and National Security Minister Stuart Young have said that intelligence reports suggest that politicians outside of the PNM are fomenting the unrest. I do not doubt that. Politics is a nasty game that is governed by no rules or ethics, in which the end—power and control of the State coffers—justifies the means. Even so, the fact that competing parties can infiltrate your bastion and use your own people against you must be cause for concern.
Continue reading Rowley’s date with destiny
By Raffique Shah
July 01, 2020
It’s difficult to get a good grasp of what’s happening on the ground regarding the general election, which will be held in the next three months. It seems that Covid-19, the virus that has impacted the world like nothing else in history, and fundamentally changed the way we live to the extent that we have coined virtually a new lexicon to comprehend its effects, said virus has relegated the election to a side-show, almost a non-event.
Continue reading Election an illusion of power