By Clint Chan Tack
May 15, 2023 – Newsday
FORMER commissioner of police (CoP) Gary Griffith on Sunday slammed CoP Erla Harewood-Christopher for her claim that 100 legal guns have been used in crimes.
Harewood-Christopher made the claim in a sworn statement filed in the High Court two weeks ago, in response to a lawsuit of gun dealer Towfeek Ali who is seeking permission to import ammunition.
Continue reading Former commissioner rubbishes top cop’s gun stats: Not so fast, Erla
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 27, 2023
Last Monday, Christine Carla Kangaloo was inaugurated as the seventh President of the Republic. I did not support her candidacy to the highest office in the land, but was buoyed by the advice my friend Arnold Rampersad gave me some years ago about one of other political leaders: “Selwyn, she is now our President. We must wish her the best, work with her, and pray that she acts in the interest of our country.”
Continue reading Pristine Christine
By Raffique Shah
March 27, 2023
Once in a while, when the nation’s ruling elites are summoned to put on display their airs and wears, we at the lower rungs of the social ladder get opportunities to view how those who consider themselves the upper castes parade like peafowls in the finest garments their TT dollar can buy. Fortunately for us lesser mortals television cameras are just about everywhere, especially when ceremonies, rituals and often times plain bad manners come under close scrutiny of the ordinary citizens who look on with expressions of disgust at these pseudo-elites. The installation last week of Christine Kangaloo as president of the republic steered pretty clear of pomp, splendour and those delightful breaches of etiquette that set off gossip among those not invited, those invitees who chose to deliberately stay away and the public who, for entertainment from the upper classes, would otherwise watch ‘Keeping up Appearances’.
Continue reading Please read, Excellency
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 20, 2023
Last Sunday, Terrence Farrell, one of our premier public intellectuals, sought to explain why some people say that “Trinidad is not a real place”. Speaking of the mess in which Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard found himself when he dismissed the Piarco airport corruption case, Farrell observed that it is these failures that prompt our frustration and “give weight to epithets such as ‘Trinidad is not a real place'” (Sunday Express, March 12).
Continue reading Is Trinidad a real place?
By Raffique Shah
March 20, 2023
You will think that a political party anywhere in the world that commands the lead stories in at least two national television newscasts per week; add for measure twenty-plus radio stations, most of which are ethnically weighted in favour of the party’s support base; three daily newspapers that go the extra mile to be fair to you, with even your lies making the cut, unlimited social media posts on the various sites, again in your favour… The party stages at least one public meeting per week that is also broadcast live on radio and at times, on television; flavor the above with, on balance unlimited parliament broadcasts that you control, if only by the volume, antics and other eye-catching tricks; sundry anti-government public meetings, often staged or influenced by the party’s activists that sometimes generate their own free media access, and so on…
Continue reading A Wasteland of Hubris
By Raffique Shah
March 06, 2023
The 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.
Continue reading Manufacturing Dictators
By Raffique Shah
February 20, 2023
As someone who has long advocated the dismantling of over-generous subsidies for a number of goods and services, many readers may find my change in position opportunistic, and proceed to lump me with politicians who thrive on hollow rhetoric such as “freedom for the masses”, even the more vacuous slogan, “freeness for the masses”.
These are flights of fancy that the younger among my generation when our larger-than-life giants like Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Patrice Lumumba and Malcolm X walked among us, preaching revolution through which we would establish an egalitarian world.
Continue reading Go softly on utility rates
Raffique Shah
February 06, 2023
If, after thorough investigations into this outrage, the State being ordered to pay approximately two million dollars each to five murder-accused in the Naipaul-Coolman case, stands; if no minister or public officer from the Ministry of the Attorney General’s office is held accountable, placed in shackles, held in jail as their trial on serious criminal charges are conducted; or if no agent of the battery of attorneys we have grown accustomed to seeing daily is charged with grand theft of Reggie Armour’s mystery file; then take notice that I, citizen Shah, shall take whatever action I decide is necessary to dissolve the republic of Trinidad and Tobago, which has proved to be a useless country not deserving the title of sovereign state.
Continue reading One Thousand Patriots
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 30, 2023
I wish to congratulate Christine Kangaloo for having been elected to the highest office of the land. Whatever her strengths and/or weaknesses, she now represents all Trinbagonians and so we ought to pledge our allegiance to her. As she said in her acceptance speech: “Now that the election is over, I look forward to serving our country in the only way I know how—with love for all and with an unwavering belief in the innate goodness of our people.”
Continue reading If you start with a lie…
By Raffique Shah
January 30, 2023
I suppose Trinidad and Tobago, being a small-island-state, very literally, has to be thankful for small mercies dished out by the super-powers of the world. In this case, big, bad USA, has finally agreed to issue a waiver on the sanctions it has imposed on Venezuela that will allow TT and Caracas to monetise an estimated 4.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from the Dragon field, which lies close to the international boundary between the two countries, but which belongs to Venezuela.
Continue reading Thanks, USA – for nothing