By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 21, 2022
There is a wonderful exchange in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland between Alice and the Cheshire Cat that is relevant to Karen Nunez-Tesheira’s quest to become the leader of the People’s National Movement (PNM).
It goes like this:
Continue reading ‘Where Is There?’
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 14, 2022
“There’s no hidin’ place up there,
Oh, I went to the hills to hide my face,
The hills cried out, ‘No hidin’ place;
There’s no hidin’ place up here.”
—An Afro-American spiritual
Things have been warming up (or deteriorating) lately in the political arena among those who see others as pothounds; those who consider themselves as thoroughbreds; and those who accuse challengers of the established order as possessing sinister motives.
Stuart Young, Minister of Energy, demeaned PNM members who offered themselves for leadership positions in the party’s forthcoming elections. He claimed that since 2015, some of them have done nothing but criticise the party leaders “like little pothounds barking at our ankles as though they are the opposition and now they want to put themselves forward and call themselves firstly PNM members and then secondly want to be PNM leaders”.
Continue reading No place to hide
By Raffique Shah
October 31, 2022
Nothing I wrote last week in my “Pensioner’s plight” column must be misconstrued as suggesting that chief justices, other judges, prime ministers and other Cabinet ministers—in other words, holders of the highest public offices in the country—do not deserve the levels of compensation, allowances and retirement benefits they currently receive.
Clearly, those who hold such offices must have met certain standards in their respective disciplines, maybe even excelled at them. Judges, for example, must win the confidence of their peers and litigants or the accused in criminal matters over which they preside. And while there are no minimal standards that politicians must meet to qualify to run for office, ultimately they are answerable to the public, to electors, if they are to win elections and form governments.
Continue reading Poor and foolish always around
By Raffique Shah
October 24, 2022
One significantly large and growing demographic of the population that is feeling the brunt of the multiple negatives that are impacting the economy and every day consumers, is the aged and the infirm. They are dying like proverbial flies, often ‘parked aside’ and ignored, or worse, left to suffer sub-human conditions, large numbers of them choosing to make their exit as quietly and quickly as they can, not wanting to subject their surviving families and friends to lingering social fallout.
Continue reading Pensioner’s Plight
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 17, 2022
PART III
On May 8, 1982, I delivered a lecture, “The Village Council as an Organ of Popular Democracy”, at the Tacarigua Village Council on the eve of its 350-year anniversary, the village having entered its name into the island’s vocabulary in 1634 when it was identified as one of the four encomiendas at the foothills of the Northern Range.
Most of the Amerindians in the village came from around Lake Tacarigua in Venezuela, which explains the origin of the village name. Years earlier, I had visited Lake Tacarigua in search of origins even though I spoke little Spanish.
Continue reading Out of the cane fields of Tacarigua
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 Raffique Shah
October 10, 2022
This race, Karen (Nunez-Tesheira), is not for leadership of The People’s National Movement. It is for leadership of the country, the nation. It requires someone of stature and fortitude who can take Trinidad and Tobago by the scruff of its neck or other body parts, shake the masses into facing the reality that we can work our way out of the deep hole we have dug ourselves into, and from which we can clamber out only if we stand shoulder to shoulder and use our collective strength.
Continue reading Talk to me
By Raffique Shah
September 19, 2022
I cried for my country on the eve of Republic Day celebrations, this one marking the 47th year as a sovereign state. That graduation of sorts removed the Queen of England as our Head of State—a contradiction so many former British colonies cling to long after they became independent.
We did, too, but opted to shed the colonial shawl in 1976. Still, we retained a critical umbilical cord that leaves us clinging to Mother England, to the Privy Council as our final court of appeal. If that sounds jokey, think about the embarrassment that we have lived with for so many years.
Continue reading Fight, not cry for our beloved country
By Raffique Shah
September 05, 2022
I was scanning the local television channels last Tuesday for any Independence-related special programming they might feature on the eve of the 60th anniversary, when I realised CCN TV6 was about to run live coverage of the formal opening of the Dr Eric Williams Memorial Library and museum in Port of Spain.
As the cameras panned the guests arriving for what was likely to be one of the feature events of the anniversary, I experienced a wave of nostalgia, memories of what seemed to have been many years ago when Erica Williams, daughter of the late prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, first communicated with me about her project.
Continue reading Academic oasis
By Raffique Shah
August 29, 2022
It’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…”
Continue reading Show me your leader