By Raffique Shah
June 26, 2023
I am convinced that the problem with politics and governance in this country, the fact that we never seem to get it right, that having wavered between PNM in control for thirty consecutive years to the party losing in 1986 33-3 then complaining about every government having freely elected them, maybe we need to look at ourselves, not the politicians.
Continue reading See No Evil, Hear No Evil
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
January 24, 2022
“Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the right to vote.”
—Frederick Douglass (1865).
A few days ago, in the United States Senate, the Democrats fought vigorously against the suppression of the rights of black people to vote that were passed by 19 Republican-controlled states of the union.
In spite of their best efforts, the Democrats failed to achieve their objective, which led Carl Hulse to opine: “It was a disheartening moment for congressional Democrats, who put the full force of their majority behind the issue, despite the long odds of success” (Boston Globe, January 26).
Continue reading Voting Rights in America
By Stephen Kangal
December 23, 2021
The emotionally charged response of Prime Minister Rowley to the Sunday Express feature article is exclusively more political than the requisite scientific in relation to his weak defense of the alleged low efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine.
He procured it with a secretive agreement from the Chinese with a huge cost — loan in a large quantity without obtaining any expected guarantee about its expected efficacy level even though scientists from developed countries refused to accept it as a genuine vaccine because trial results were not published globally and were not accessible.
Continue reading Let Medical Professionals Speak on COVID Vaccines
By Stephen Kangal, Caroni
December 12, 2021
The landslide vote of 15,000 plus in the 14-1 melt-down that the PDP amassed in Monday’s historic THA Elections is an unmistakably overriding vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Rowley.
He was the chief protagonist in the Tobago campaign as well as the architect of the aborted Autonomy Bills that incited the wrath of Tobagonians by non-passage. These Bills were woefully short in details on what Tobago demanded as autonomy for their island Government.
Continue reading Grounds for the Resignation of PM Rowley
By Raffique Shah
July 12, 2021
In this racially-fractured society, in which we can agree on nothing of substance, nothing that might help the nation move forward, or, to stretch this from the ridiculous to the sublime, we are a people so deeply divided that we shall never find ourselves on the same side of a battle-line should some army of the insane decide to conquer Trinidad and Tobago by force, readers might justifiably ask who in their “right mind” would want to own, rule or otherwise lay claim to the cussed country?
Continue reading Race rules in this wasteland
By Shane Superville
June 18, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
Remarks made by the Prime Minister during a media conference last Saturday led to a heated exchange between officials from the Guyanese government and business community and Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Foreign and Caricom Affairs on Friday.
During his presentation, Dr Rowley referred to a table highlighting the number of vaccines received by all 14 Caricom countries and their associates as of Saturday.
Continue reading Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana officials in vaccine-use crosstalk
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 17, 2021
“We need to solve our problems without causing a civil war that can be a danger to our existence.”
—President Reuven Rivlin, President of Israel
In 1963, Martin Luther King was imprisoned in a Birmingham jail for leading a nonviolent demonstration against American segregation. As he sat in that jail, he responded to the concerns of eight white religious leaders who condemned his participation in that struggle for justice. He noted: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
Continue reading Palestinian Lives Matter
By Raffique Shah
April 26, 2021
I round off my intervention on the many possibilities we might find in a new post-Covid economy by reminding readers the pandemic has hammered economies across the world, irrespective of their sizes, in ways never before seen.
Oil was rocked to unimaginably low prices. Stock markets swayed as if in stupor, major commodity prices collapsed to uneconomic levels, and the virus disrupted world production of essential industries, goods and services, leaving governments confused, powerless, defeated.
Continue reading Of dollars and sense
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