COP’s ‘Real Red’ First Anniversary Rally

COP's First Anniversary Rally
COP’s First Anniversary Rally in pictures

TriniView.com Reporters

With the next general elections looming, the Congress of the People held their first anniversary celebrations with a rally titled Real Red: The Event. Thousands of people from throughout the country wearing red C.O.P. jerseys packed into Woodford Square, a venue that has traditionally been politically associated with the ruling People’s National Movement. Police reportedly estimated the crowd size as between 25,000 to 30,000.
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Win the battle, lose the war

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, September 9th 2007

Patrick ManningPNM leader Patrick Manning must be over-confident about his party’s chances in the general elections that should be held no later than early December. Why else would he trigger tremors in the ruling party at this critical point, virtually on the eve of elections?

Whether or not his “secret poll” on the performances of his MPs prompted five of ten among his frontline parliamentarians to declare their decision to not seek re-election may never be known. If there’s one thing the PNM has been efficient at in its 51-year history, it is keeping secrets within the fold. So while we in the media may speculate, even pronounce on whispers, supposedly from well-placed sources, we shall never know what is true from what is not.
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MPs vs Manning

By Irene Medina
www.newsday.co.tt
Tuesday, September 4 2007

Patrick ManningSenior MPs of the ruling People National Movement’s (PNM) have lashed out at their political leader and Prime Minister Patrick Manning for using a secretly conducted poll as a screening mechanism to weed them out of the General Elections line-up.

A top PNM insider says that Manning is using the poll, a creation of a committee led by PNM public relations officer, Jerry Narace “to create sycophants and a Cabinet of putty to do what he wants.”
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Independence King–a forgotten figure

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, September 2nd 2007

Independence Day Parade and Awards 2007As the nation marked its 45th anniversary of Independence last Friday, focus would have been on the many statements of achievements by leaders in the society, some criticisms of where we have failed, and on outstanding individuals, especially recipients of national awards. The fact that a society as diverse as ours has survived devious moves to divide us along racial and religious lines is something we ought to be proud of. We have also, to our credit, withstood several major political upheavals and lean economic times.
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Cudjoe’s Grasping At Straws

By Stephen Kangal
August 29, 2007

Congress of the PeopleHaving been controversially appointed via the political patronage route to the Board of the Central Bank (CB), nondescript Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe has to earn his political keep by splitting hairs between economics, monetarism and politics and labouring in vain with annoying trivialities to demonstrate his lack of true professionalism.

Were Dr. Cudjoe a self-proclaimed genuine disciple of the truth as he claims to, he would have done the requisite research as a professional. He should have compared the original text of the speeches delivered by the former Governor of the Central Bank with the edited text of those included in Mr. Dookeran’s book before casting premature, hasty, silly and politically motivated aspersions on the integrity of Dookeran the author.
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Hindu Oppression: Replying to Vijay Naraynsingh

Replying to Vijay Naraynsingh

By Marion O’Callaghan
www.newsday.co.tt
Monday, August 27 2007

IndiansI had mapped out in my mind what I would write for this Monday of the week of Independence Day Celebrations when lo and behold I come across Prof Vijay Naraynsingh’s address at the Fourth Mahant Ramdass Award Celebrations. I say to myself, “there goes again any hope of our living up to the promises of Independence and of a Republic.”
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The good times will not roll on forever

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, August 26th 2007

Natural GasPrime Minister Patrick Manning and his critics seem to be missing the main issue in the heated debate over the Ryder Scott report on our gas reserves. It’s not about how much gas there is, or how much more is waiting to be “discovered”. If some global energy experts are right, Trinidad and Tobago is sitting on possible reserves of 90 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas. And if, over the next ten years, we succeed in adding 25 per cent of that volume to our proved reserves, then Mr Manning’s industrialisation programme will be adequately serviced with its principal feedstock, relatively cheap gas. If they are wrong, if gas runs out in ten years, then we’d be left with a mass of abandoned, rundown plants, much the way Texaco left us holding a skeletal refinery that was on the brink of collapse.
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Chaguaramas landowner arrested

By Malissa Lara
www.newsday.co.tt
Thursday, August 23 2007

Augustin NoelAUGUSTIN NOEL, head of the Chaguaramas Land Owners’ committee was yesterday arrested after he was caught defacing a concrete pillar in front of the Aluminium Company of America’s facility in Chaguaramas.

Noel was seen pounding a large nail into the concrete slab marking the entrance to the old US Naval Base at Chaguaramas. There have been protests by landowners in recent time over the return of land leased to the US Government by the United Kingdom in 1941 during World War II.
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Budgetary exercise in futility

Dr. Kwame Nantambu
August 22, 2007

Red HouseNow that the TT $42.2b 2007-08 budget has been presented to the citizenry of TnT, the casual, albeit non-political observer is only forced to conclude that it was a budgetary exercise in futility on the heels of a general election.

Indeed, “the Arithmetic of the budget” suggests that the 5,000 plus workers of the Community Environment Protection Enhancement Program (CEPEP) and their families, the 26,000 new home owners and their families, and by extension, government ministers and their families are the only electoral entities who should vote for the PNM.
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