By Anna Ramdass
May 18, 2023 – trinidadexpress.com
The 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.
Continue reading GOVT LOSES AT PRIVY COUNCIL – ‘PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO VOTE’
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 Raffique Shah
October 17, 2022
To think that once upon a time, many years ago, I actually considered pursuing law as a profession. Naïve, idealist I, would have been torn apart by the dogs of law, drawn and quartered by the merchants of justice, or, who knows, I might have succumbed to the practitioners’ code of compliance, casting aside shame and dignity, fight for my slice of the largesse from the multi-million dollars in “briefs” advocates at stake every living-or-dying day in this country. So much litigation.
Continue reading Stark staring mad
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 18, 2021
When the Opposition gave notice last week that it intended to file a vote of no confidence in Faris Al-Rawi, it was another sequel in an ongoing battle to get rid of one of the most inefficient attorneys general our country has ever known.
After he filed the motion against Al-Rawi, San Juan/Barataria MP Saddam Hosein noted: “We have seen six consecutive years of legislative incompetence and legislative insanity. And now the icing on the cake is the particular 2021 Order… which attempted to change the law for the appointment of a Commissioner of Police,” (Express, October 1)
Continue reading Has the People’s Lawyer lost his way?
By Raffique Shah
October 18, 2021
It saddens me to write what I am about to, but it’s harsh reality that we must face and fight, or, if we are the unpatriotic cowards many believe we are, then we might consider joining millions of others across the world who abandon all hope in their native lands and become refugees, moving like nomads anywhere the wind and fellow-refugees take them.
Continue reading There is no crisis
By Jada Loutoo
October 15, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
AS of midnight, the country will, for the first time since Independence, be without a commissioner of police at the helm of the police service.
This is because the acting appointment of deputy Commissioner McDonald Jacob comes to an end on Friday, and the acting appointment of former commissioner Gary Griffith by the Police Service Commission (PSC) from August 18 was deemed unlawful hours before.
Continue reading Court rules both Griffith, Jacob appointments illegal
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 15, 2021
It must have been in the early 1940s. My father slapped my mother.
She took him to court. Six months later the trial took place. The magistrate asked what had happened. My mother told him.
‘Have you made back up now?’ the magistrate asked.
‘Yes,’ my mother answered.
Continue reading When love ceases
By Dr Selwyn Cudjoe
February 23, 2021
Some people described the killing of Andrea Bharatt as “monstrous”, “brutal”, “horrible”, and “barbarous”. Those responsible for her death were called “monsters” or “Lucifers in the flesh”.
An autopsy showed the horrendous manner in which Andrea was killed. Rich and poor, Africans and Indians, urban and rural folks, were all repulsed by the barbarity of her killers.
Continue reading Who really are the monsters?
By Raffique Shah
February 08, 2021
THE outrage expressed by many people over the most recent case of the abduction and murder of a young woman is understandable.
We cannot believe that there exist among us depraved people who are capable of committing atrocities, inflicting extreme violence on women with seemingly consummate ease and callous detachment. It’s as if they are cast in some science fiction horror movie, acting out their darkest obsessions and cruellest fantasies, except the victims are real live people who end up very dead, sometimes mutilated and tortured before they die.
Continue reading Be careful when you hunt rapists
By Dr Tye Salandy
September 22, 2019
As I mentioned in the first article in this three part series, the Sedition Act is not archaic or outdated, but it was an extremely bad law in the first place given its deliberate vagueness, its colonial intentions and the way that it was weaponized against those who resisted the brutal British empire. Critiquing the bill using words such as outdated and archaic gives the impression that it once was a good law, and it is just the passage of time that makes it problematic in the present time. Nothing could be further from the truth, as from its creation in Trinidad and Tobago, the sedition law was a tool of the colonial elite that was used against the public interest.
Continue reading Sedition and other Nonsensical Colonial Laws