By Raffique Shah
Sunday, April 20th 2008
THIRTY-EIGHT years ago tomorrow, a group of us comprising young officers in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment (TTR), along with a few hundred soldiers, etched our names in history by revolting and seizing control of the army’s HQ at Teteron Barracks. We would hold the camp for ten days before subjecting ourselves to being arrested. We were charged with mutiny and treason among other serious offences. Of the 80-odd men arrested, around 40 faced court martial, with 25-or-so being sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. After 27 months in jail, we would walk free, thanks to the judicial system that remained fiercely independent of the political directorate.
Continue reading Nostalgia for the 1970s
This critique is in response to an article titled “Judge: Address racism to move ahead” that appeared in The Daily Express (14 April 2008) in which Justice Wendell Kangaloo is reported to have said that “we in Trinidad and Tobago would do well to start a conversation about race” in order to move this country forward.
In Omeros, Derek Walcott’s epic poem, Achille, one of the major protagonists, returns to Africa and is welcomed home by Ofolabe, his father. During that visit, Ofolabe learns that Achille changed his African name to a Caribbean name that has little meaning. Hurt by this name change, Afolabe retorts:
“We have not seen the last of the rising price of rice.” This is the view of president of the Supermarkets Association of T&T (Satt) Heeranand Maharaj. 
BACK in the mid-1970s there was a very vocal minority of “Tobago secessionists” who ranted about the sister-isle being treated like a “bastard”, and who demanded its independence. Dr Winston Murray, one of its two elected MPs, designed a Tobago flag which he proudly displayed on his desk in the Parliament chamber. The secessionist lobby argued, with some justification, that the island was starved of resources, its residents not treated fairly by the central government in Port of Spain.
OPPOSITION LEADER Basdeo Panday’s legal problems just got a little worse. More than one year after having his political life revitalised by the quashing of a criminal conviction against him, the Privy Council yesterday paved the way for him to face a retrial on three charges of failing to declare a joint London bank account to the Integrity Commission. 
Over the past two weeks, some of my friends have accused me of or complimented me for going down memory lane. Others have suggested that once the genie is out of the bottle there is really no way to get it back in. They are both correct but for the wrong reasons. There was no attempt to go down memory lane for its own sake or to get the genie back into the bottle. I was trying to say that when experts talk about our crime situation and/or the factors leading towards its escalation they usually forget the human or ideological dimension of the problem even as they emphasize the hard, economic, policing or political dimensions.
Roman Catholic priest Fr Garfield Rochard who took a controversial decision late last year to stop a man who had witnessed a murder from entering the compound of the Church of the Assumption, Maraval, yesterday said the man’s murder over the weekend was expected.
ON March 26, Tata Motors, a division of India’s oldest and most diversified conglomerate, paid the mighty Ford of America US$2.3 billion to acquire two jewels in Britain’s motoring crown, Land Rover and Jaguar. The next day Tata Chemicals acquired General Chemicals of the USA for US$1 billion. Even as the Tata Group spread its wings across the globe, a handful of Trinidad and Tobago’s biggest businessmen and institutions gathered at the Trinidad Hilton to sell their shares in RBTT to the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC).