Tag Archives: Keith Rowley

Court, General T&T, PNM, Politics

Independence, sedition and legislative violence

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Of Independence, sedition and legislative violence: how elitist laws have damaged the nation

By Dr Tye Salandy
September 02, 2019
UPDATED: September 03, 2019

Sedition, careful, careful how you talking … hey hey!

Sedition, careful, careful whey you walking

Incompetent idiots have genuine patriots

Always under escort in the sedition court.

—The Mighty Sparrow (Sedition)

Dr Tye SalandyThe Sedition Act, used recently to charge Watson Duke (and earlier Michael Seales and Abu Bakr), is a dangerous law that has no place in our law books. This Sedition Act, along with marijuana laws, anti-loitering laws, vagrancy laws, and obeah laws, is part of a long list of colonial laws that are still on the books.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, Law, Media, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity

The Road Make to Walk…

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 06, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeLast Sunday, four of the five Sunday columnists of this newspaper wrote about the crime problem that confronts the nation. The Sunday Guardian also published a long investigative piece on the subject. On Monday, Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon talked about the pervasiveness of crime and concluded that ours is “a culture of disrespect.” At a fundamental level, it is more an economic-philosophical than a moral question. Left unattended and incorrectly analyzed, it will lead to greater degeneracy.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, PNM, Politics

While Rome Burned…

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 09, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeLast Sunday I wrote that in spite of our material prosperity, our spiritual being is diminished in the process. I noted: “We cannot walk the streets as freely as we want, we are overwhelmed by corruption and crime, and our interaction as social beings has been tragically reduced.”

That evening Mount Lambert residents witnessed bullets flying all over the place as two gangs took on each other. One resident said: “‘[It was] like a scene out of a movie in which warring factions traded bullets with each other…. It showed that criminals were becoming more and more brazen since they no longer had any fear of committing crimes in broad daylight and for any and every one to see” (Express, July 1).
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General T&T, PNM, Politics

The Labyrinthine World of Doublethink

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 27, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoePaul Leacock wept bitter tears. The party to which he has given his life shamed him publicly in the only space where he knew he could seek answers to the problems that arose in his official duties: PNM’s General Council.

On June 15 at PNM’s General Council meeting he asked for guidance in a matter in which his corporation, the Tunapuna-Piarco Regional Corporation, had exceeded its authorized expenditure. Leacock is the chairman of the Tunapuna-Piarco Regional Corporation.
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Business, Finance, General T&T, Oil and Gas, Politics, Recession

Identifying and fighting economic apartheid

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By Raffique Shah
June 14, 2019

Raffique ShahTrinidad and Tobago should be grateful for having among its citizens patriots who are unafraid to speak out on issues that affect us all, and more importantly, who bear allegiance to the country, not to any political party. Of course, such persons have the right to support a party of their choice at any point in time. But they also jealously maintain their independence by criticising the policies and actions of the party they voted for when they are convinced it has made decisions that are inimical to the best interests of the nation.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, Law, Murder, PNM, Politics, Violence

Cultural & Environmental Violence

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 20, 2019

“I bear a grudge that we in Trinidad do not pay enough attention to our heroes. They are the people that will give Trinidad life.”

—Beryl McBurnie quoted in Judy Raymond, Beryl McBurnie

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThere has been much coverage about the horrible murder of the prime minister’s boyhood friend John Miles and his wife Eulyn at the hands of a monstrously deranged person. This dastardly act led the PM to bemoan: “What have we become? What are we producing as ‘the next generation’? John and I grew up together in poverty, with pride, but violence and criminality were never part of our life” (Express, May 4).
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General T&T, Hinduism, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, Religion, UNC

Calcuttising Sat’s Message To Tobagonians

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By Stephen Kangal
May 01, 2019

Stephen KangalIt is patently clear that Prime Minister Rowley grabbed the quite innocuous, viewed from a local context, but attention-attracting Sat Statement and attempted to clothe it with the now infamous Calcutta Ship robes geared to arrest the declining support for the PNM in Tobago from the rise and rise of the Duke factor.

It was engineered to achieve the same electoral result as Sandy’s 2013 Statement and to nip the incipient electoral fortunes of Minority Leader Watson Duke in the bud.
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General T&T, Hinduism, Politics, Racism Watch, Religion

Stoking the fires of racial discord

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By Raffique Shah
April 23, 2019

Raffique ShahAs I watched the mayhem unfold across Sri Lanka last Sunday, the death toll from multiple bombings at churches and hotels mounting from the initial count of 160 as some of the severely injured succumbed to their injuries, I thought of how fortunate we in Trinidad and Tobago have been thus far. More than that, I wondered if the purveyors of divisiveness, those who routinely stoke the fires of racial, religious and political discord in this otherwise harmonious society, realise the dangers to which they expose us all.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Recession, UNC

The Dog and the Bone

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 22, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOver the past year, Ralph Maraj, a fellow columnist, has been a tick in PNM’s behind. He isn’t always wrong in his commentaries—even a broken clock is correct at least twice a day—but his obsessive fascination with PNM’s failures leads one to question his objectivity and the distorting lens of his overwrought rhetoric.

Last Sunday he listed everything PNM has done wrong during its tenure and why he is heartened by UNC’s plans as it prepares to govern from 2020.
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General T&T, Oil and Gas, PNM, Politics

Government must come clean on future of oil industry

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By Raffique Shah
April 02, 2019

Raffique ShahThe Keith Rowley Government needs to stop playing the ox with what little is left of the oil industry in Trinidad and Tobago. A few weeks ago, chairman of the successor company to Petrotrin, Wilfred Espinet, inadvertently (according to Energy Minister Franklin Khan) invited “interested parties who possess the requisite energy sector expertise and substantial financial resources” to apply for an initial marketing document regarding the proposed sale of Guaracara Refining Company (GRC) and Paria Fuel Trading Company (PFTC).
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