By Raffique Shah
October 20, 2013
This local government elections campaign was the nastiest ever in the history of this country.
And three man-rats, abetted by their respective executives, can take credit for having reduced electioneering to a level so low, anything worse will be burrowing the sewer mains. Dip your heads Jack Warner, Anand Ramlogan and Roodal Moonilal.
Continue reading Nastiest campaign ever
By Raffique Shah
October 13, 2013
Over the past 40 years, since the first oil boom began in 1973, allegations of corruption against government ministers, other politicians and senior public officials must have exceeded the one-thousand mark. I refer to alleged acts of corruption involving tens of millions of dollars and more, not to petty sums below, say, five million.
Since each corrupt transaction of this magnitude necessarily involves several persons—politicians, contractors, corporations, bankers, public officers—we could easily say that at least 5,000 persons of high standing in the society were involved.
Continue reading Corruption and deception
By Raffique Shah
October 05, 2013
The street I live on is about 200 metres long, with two side streets, each 50 metres, making it a grand total of 300 metres. There are 24 residential properties located here, with two empty plots. A small river is the main drain that collects water from a few box drains (ah, box drains, a defining feature of modern Trinidad and Tobago!) and takes it to the Gulf of Paria.
Continue reading Who needs politicians?
By Raffique Shah
September 29, 2013
Really, it’s a messed-up, mixed-up world in which someone like young Ravindra Ramrattan falls victim to indescribable madness, to savagery clothed in religion. Even as I ponder the enormous possibilities that were terminated in murderous gunfire in far-off Kenya, I take comfort in my agnosticism that has kept me aloof of the zealots of one religion or other, and my revolutionary spirit that soars above the ideologues who manufacture and manipulate madmen for whom no life is precious, not even their own.
Continue reading Victim of Zealots
By Raffique Shah
September 22, 2013
Republic Day in 1976—Friday, September 24th—remains etched in my memory, a vignette in my colourful life during which I often collided with history. On that day, age 30, I entered Parliament as a frontline member of the ULF, having been elected to represent the Siparia constituency. I had never been in that chamber before. In fact, I do not recall ever entering the Red House before, but when I did, I made as bold an anti-colonial statement as anyone could.
Continue reading Colonial to their garments
By Raffique Shah
September 14, 2013
When House Speaker Wade Mark invoked the contentious constitutional provision that an elected MP, Herbert Volney in this instance, must vacate his seat upon resigning or being expelled from the party on whose slate he was elected to Parliament, it piqued my interest. You see, I was a principal player in the events that led to the passage of that amendment to the Constitution in 1978, and I am intimate with its genesis.
Continue reading Donkey with a kick
By Raffique Shah
September 08, 2013
Rather than re-shuffle her Cabinet for a third time in three years, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar should have considered resigning and calling fresh general elections.
By an annual tinkering with her appointees and their portfolios, the PM has all but admitted she is incapable of leading the country, which, really, is nothing to be ashamed of. The great Eric Williams often complained this country was ungovernable. It still is.
Continue reading Governing the ungovernable
By Raffique Shah
August 31, 2013
I choose to reflect on the nation’s Independence anniversary through the prism of a glass half-full rather than half-empty. We endure so many negatives in this country—our daily dosage of murder, lawlessness from top to bottom, pillage of the national purse—that if we did not know how to laugh in the face of adversity, we would implode from cerebral constipation.
Continue reading Give thanks, Trini
By Raffique Shah
August 24, 2013
Not since late Commissioner of Police Jules Bernard publicly declared, “I’m a toothless bulldog!” have I heard so many outlandish statements coming from the mouths of senior officers of the Police Service.
“Criticism hurts,” screams Acting CoP Stephen Williams. Yet, Williams and his most senior officers say and do the most ludicrous things, inviting not just criticism, but oftentimes, bellyfuls of laughter.
Continue reading Comic cops
By Raffique Shah
August 17, 2013
The ten leading stories in last Friday’s online Express related to Jehue Gordon’s golden performance at the IAAF World Championships in Moscow. While that was a welcome respite from the daily fare of murder and mayhem, it told a sad story of just how starved this country is for good news.
Continue reading Plea for Gordon