Monthly Archives: July 2021

General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Car exemption hypocrisy

21 Comments

By Errol Pilgrim
July 25, 2021 – trinidadexpress.com

Raffique ShahJohn Doe is not a government minister, neither is he head of any government department.

Mr Doe is among the thousands of ordinary workers in the public service entitled by law to tax-exempt purchases of motor cars.

Like his counterparts in other statutory bodies and throughout the public service, Doe is a travelling officer entitled – pandemic or no pandemic – to motor-car tax exemptions and a travelling allowance.
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Culture, General T&T

Honorable Lives / Forgotten Worlds

27 Comments

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 26, 2021

By the rivers of Babylon/Where we sat down/And there we wept/When we remembered Zion.

But the wicked carried us away in captivity/Required from us a song/How can we sing King Alpha song/ In a strange land?

—Jimmy Cliff, “Rivers of Babylon”

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeTwo Fridays ago Brian Lehrer interviewed me on his radio show on WNYC (New York) about Jamaica’s most recent petition to Britain for $10.5 billion (US) in reparation for the damage done to our people during slavery. I informed Lehrer that Jamaicans have been battling Spain and Britain for the control of their lives and the product of their labor ever since those two countries enslaved and later colonized their country.
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health

Choosing fight over flight

3 Comments

By Raffique Shah
July 26, 2021

Raffique ShahI got vaccinated last week. I received the first of two doses of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine. I chose the drive-through option at the Ato Boldon Stadium because it is close to my home and I didn’t have to leave the privacy or comfort of my car to queue up at any stage of the proceedings, which is helpful to people who suffer with Parkinson’s and similar neurological disorders.

The operation was organised by Proman, a large project management corporation in the energy sector, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. Fazad Mohammed, the company’s manager of corporate communications, said they hoped to fully vaccinate 7,000 people in this initiative.
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Elections, General T&T, PNM, Politics, WASA

PNM’s Political Strategy To Deny Tobago Self-Governance

30 Comments

By Stephen Kangal
July 25, 2021

Stephen KangalThe ill-advised, overtly hurried and premature introduction into Parliament of the two completely new Bills on June 28 last on the long-festering granting of autonomy/self-governance to Tobago prior to and without conducting the requisite inter-active consultations with the Tobago constituency of principal stakeholders by the PNM was a deliberate, deceptive, nefarious, dishonest and calculated politically -conceptualised strategy to shelve the Tobago issue.
Continue reading PNM’s Political Strategy To Deny Tobago Self-Governance →

General T&T, Politics

Tobago Does Not Need this Self Government Bills Hamper

49 Comments

By Stephen Kangal, CARONI
July 19, 2021

Stephen KangalWhile hampers are in high demand and par for the course of alleviating abject poverty today, Tobago after twenty-five years of civilised persistence for attaining genuine self-government and functional autonomy (2018 Bill) is being presented with a misleading hamper of Bills even though Tobago is politically well-endowed.

Tobagonians must submit themselves to that pittance irrespective of the extent to which these Bills have deviated from responding to their hitherto well-articulated legitimate expectations.
Continue reading Tobago Does Not Need this Self Government Bills Hamper →

corruption, General T&T, PNM, South Africa

PNM: Avoiding the Pitfall of Decline

7 Comments

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 19, 2021

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeTwo weeks ago South Africa’s Constitutional Court sentenced Jacob Zuma to 15 months in prison for contempt of court. He refused to appear at a government enquiry committee that was looking into the corruption that took place during his nine-year rule. The party (ANC) began to run the state as though it was just another arm of the party, and therein lay its downfall.
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Finance, General T&T, Politics, Recession

Make poverty a punishable crime

7 Comments

By Raffique Shah
July 19, 2021

Raffique ShahEvery so often, and since Covid-19 struck, maybe all too often reporters in the mainstream media assail us with heart-rending stories of families living in abject poverty—you know the kind: mother with three-to-ten urchin-like children, no resident father or no explanation of his or their absence, crammed into a dilapidated shack that looks like it will collapse if you sneezed in it; the little faces staring into the cameras are poster-images for strife and famine in some God-forsaken distant land; and the cries are always the same… my children will starve to death… if only I had a house… no, I can’t afford to send them to school… we need food, clothes, books, electricity… and so on.
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General T&T, Parliament, PNM, Politics, UNC

Leadership is a choice, office not a prerequisite

10 Comments

By Dr Indera Sagewan
July 14, 2021

Indera Sagewan, PhDNot all Ministers are leaders, but all Ministers believe themselves leaders. This is the misnomer of politics in T&T. I battled to stay on course with my promised part 2 of “people-centred recovery.” But, the offensive flaunting of parliamentary privilege to own a Benz/Prado, when thousands don’t have bread to eat won the war. Office does not equal leadership.
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General T&T, Parliament, PNM, Politics, UNC

Exploiting the Privileges of a Minister

16 Comments

By Stephen Kangal
July 13, 2021

Stephen KangalThere at least two matters that I consider to be very frivolous and entirely vexatious in the unwarranted Statement of the AG delivered in the House when it met on Friday 2 July to consider The Finance Bill.

We had our saturation fill on these Bills on Monday to Wednesday last.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

The danger of verbal violence

12 Comments

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 12, 2021

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI don’t know how the acidic squabble between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will end, but I know that verbal violence can have as much devastating consequences as physical violence.

Two of our most prominent leaders cannot be at each other’s throats every day, with their hate-filled language poisoning the national blood stream.
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