By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 13, 2021
I left Trinidad and Tobago on March 16, 2020, a few days before the borders were closed to citizens and visitors alike. I was on the verge of departing for a ten-day visit to India, at the invitation of the Indian government as a part of its Academic Visitors Programme for distinguished scholars.
Continue reading Opening the borders
By Raffique Shah
April 12, 2021
There must be an ultra-secret super-Lotto somewhere in the universe, where only the super-wealthy and governments-by-vaps play for super-stakes—you know, jackpots paid in gazillions, in currencies-of-choice, and in cash, s’il vous plait. Really, there must be. Why else would Finance Minister Colm Imbert and Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley strut around a country that looks like an abandoned steam locomotive whose era has gone, they looking cooler than the proverbial cucumber, seemingly without care or worry, while lesser mortals like your humble scribe worry to no end over the near-evaporation of foreign exchange, the unavailability of any good or service that we can sell in large enough volumes that will yield the billions of US dollars we require for our sustenance?
Continue reading Pass the teacup
By Raffique Shah
March 22, 2021
It took a global pandemic that has, in one short year, claimed 2.7 million lives, infected 123 million people in 221 countries, to expose man for what he really is—a beast in human form.
For all his posturing on being civilised, on cooperation in the battle against the Covid-19 virus through agencies such as the World Health Organisation and the United Nations, when several vaccines were finally developed, tried and approved, the wealthiest, most powerful nations simply trampled on the poor, grabbed all they could without shame, pity or any kind of emotion that is supposed to distinguish man from beast.
Continue reading Betrayed by PAHO, WHO?
By Julien Neaves
March 17, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
POLITICAL and social activist Bernard Yawching said he expects backlash over his book The Hidden Agenda of Race Relations in Trinidad and Tobago.
The new book accuses the United National Congress (UNC), the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), and some members of the Hindu community and the East Indian community of promoting a racist agenda. It tracks events from a 1913 speech by former Arima Mayor FEM Hosein about Africans not being as productive as Indians to more modern-day controversies such as Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar describing the Prime Minister as an “oreo.”
Continue reading Bernard Yawching defends book accusing UNC, Hindus of racist agenda
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 09, 2021
Sometimes we, as commentators, use our columns to pontificate about the correct moral and ethical thing to do, but I wonder if we were placed in positions of power would we not have done the same things that we condemn public officials for doing. I am thinking of Winston Duke, his wife, Kim de Silva, and all the other spouses of powerful men and women in government and trade unions who use their official connections to set up their better halves in business in which they are connected.
Continue reading Shamelessness
By Raffique Shah
March 08, 2021
If a brush with death is said to prompt man to reflect more deeply on life, then the Covid-19 pandemic that swooped down on mankind last year, cutting a path of death and destruction such as we had never seen in our lifetime, has also triggered deep thinking on the social contracts that exist among governments and the governed, on how societies are structured to sustain inequality, and on altering such arrangements, replacing them with more equitable alternatives.
Continue reading Remove these shackles
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 01, 2021
“No society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences, and the consequences are chaos for everybody in the society.”
—James Baldwin, Conversations
There are two troubling aspects of slavery and colonialism that remain within our consciousness even though we claim that slavery and colonialism are conditions of the past. The first is the self-hate that these socio-economic formations have created in Black people and a resulting tendency to do everything to prevent fellow Blacks from moving forward. Frantz Fanon discussed this condition in Black Skin, White Masks.
Continue reading Black People & the Social Contract
By Raffique Shah
March 01, 2021
I cannot claim to have conducted any scientific survey by interviewing samples of the population the way political pollsters do, but I feel certain if I did, I would find that as many as seven out of every ten adults believe that ‘Trinidad and Tobago gone through’, in the broadest sense of that colloquial term.
Put in standard English, that implies that the economy has collapsed, institutions have imploded, law and order do not exist, poverty is of near-epidemic proportions, and every metric one can imagine shows a failed state on the brink of implosion.
Continue reading We will survive
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 09, 2021
I am still trying to understand why Blue Waters needed to import 39 non-nationals to work on its bottling plant when there is such high unemployment among our youths and specialized workers from Petrotrin and other related enterprises.
When Kamla Persad-Bissessar questioned Stuart Young about this matter, the latter mansplained: “This was a request by a manufacturer to bring in specialized workers to upgrade their plant. This is not unusual or unique. The persons entering would have presented their negative PCR test, they will be paying for their quarantine at a State-supervised quarantine facility” (Express, January 30, 2021).
Continue reading Backward Ever
By Raffique Shah
February 01, 2021
I prefix what I write here today with an article of faith that I have learnt to value, especially as I grow older: speak up, speak out, whenever I feel strongly about something, when I see lies being promoted as the truth, when I see evil portrayed as good, mine must be a voice of reason in a world that appears to be consumed by misinformation at a time when ‘fake news’ is ingested by herds of humans and regurgitated as gospel truths.
Continue reading Leaders or Liars