By Raffique Shah
October 18, 2025
At first, I thought I had completed a full circle. You see, I was just about ten years old when I got a notion of what a full circle was: you just go around, and around. In my 80th year I am seeing a full circle with the “make-work programme” that had started out as the Prime Minister’s “special works” programme with much fanfare. I had learnt of it in the newspaper which my father bought ritually every Sunday morning.
Continue reading The first circle
By Raffique Shah
October 04, 2025
As a columnist who has written a weekly piece in one or more popular newspapers for at least 45 years, I know that I’ve reached my limit when the person who is helping me type the 800 words I am allowed is my daughter: she was in diapers back in 1981 and I used to occasionally shout at her when I tried to concentrate or focus, and now I am in diapers—more out of caution than need.
But knowing that, I have arrived at the point in my life when I can no longer say “that column is mine”, my views and only mine.
Continue reading Death before retirement
By Raffique Shah
September 29, 2025
When I look back at it, I was among a selected few thousands in the world who got around to playing a part in the Cold War. This latter name confuses generations that did not exist then or since. The Cold War was primarily a continuation of hostilities between the “Eastern Bloc” (Russia and many other Communist states on one side) and the United States of America, its NATO allies and others on the other side.
Continue reading What do they know of war?
By Raffique Shah
September 20, 2025
Thousands here in Trinidad and Tobago who watched the recent World Athletics Championships do not know how fortunate they are to have live telecasting of the prestigious event. A mere 20 years ago there was limited coverage of such events, and very often television and radio stations paid huge sums of money to earn the right to carry the events; both audiences and owners/managers felt cheated. You don’t have to be a fan of athletics or any sport to appreciate what it means for nationals of any country to see their representatives on these international stages-stadia, swimming pools, tennis courts, etc.
Continue reading Thanks for restoring our pride
By Raffique Shah
September 13, 2025
As I move along slowly towards what will be, if I make it, my 80th year on this here earth, mostly I feel as if I am not relevant to what’s happening around me. There was a time when I would easily sit behind my laptop and write up very sound, must-read columns that my many fans would call in to cuss or kiss me over, depending not so much on what was written but how it was written.
Continue reading TTT, Goebbels, and geriatrics
By Raffique Shah
September 06, 2025
I have remained fascinated for 50 years and more by how the story (or stories) of my exploits, whenever I’ve had cause to recall details, might help people who were born long after the Mutiny at Teteron Barracks to understand what it looked like.
I had that experience again last week when I was putting together some notes; memoirs to prepare my manuscript for publication. People who listen to the story of how two 24-year-young lieutenants trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst joined with their soldiers, leading the latter as we seized control of the barracks.
Continue reading Aunty Kams, the bad-Jane
By Raffique Shah
August 30, 2025
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar can never be as uninformed as she portrays herself to be in matters of foreign affairs, to wit: regional and hemispheric alliances. It took previous governments, starting with the PNM in the 1960s, to cultivate good relations with our Spanish-speaking neighbours in Venezuela.
We often forgot then, as many states now learn, that there is the vast expanse of Portuguese-speaking Brazil a step away from Venezuela.
Continue reading Sleeping with the enemy
By Stephen Kangal, Caroni
August 26, 2025
THE right of the United States to deploy its naval vessels in international and territorial waters located across the globe is exercising the freedom of navigation/right of innocent/transit passage in the territorial seas/international straits of other nations.
It is not an aspect/expression/enactment of its sovereignty the exercise of which is limited to, inter alia, its land space, air space above and its territorial sea, Minister Sobers.
Continue reading US has no right off Venezuelan coast
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 16, 2025
I wish to remind UNC detractors that the term “revolution” denotes the overthrow of an old order and replacing it with a new system of governance. Sometimes a revolution is violent, sometimes it’s peaceful. Whatever form it takes, it involves changing the social and economic order, repudiating how things were done previously, and delineating what it hopes to accomplish in the future.
Continue reading The revolutionary disrupter
By Raffique Shah
August 16, 2025
I hope I am mistaken, that I have purged myself of the spirit of the sugar industry that came with the first colonisers and all but strangled Trinidad and Tobago’s economy for many years. I am not ungrateful, mark you, for what sugar has given us by way of revenues and opportunities and “solid, liquid cash”, according to Mastana Bahar’s hosts. But its contribution to the wealth of the nation may well have been close to zilch when one considers the number of times it lost money, wrecked people’s savings, and left the country in a state of disaster.
Continue reading I Commend PM Kamla