Tag Archives: Politics
Vote out the PNM
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 28, 2024
Three recent events cemented in my mind that the poor and the not-so-poor will suffer much more over the next five years than they do today if the present Government is not changed.
The PNM must move aside to allow us to inhale a new breath of freedom, experience greater competence in running the country’s affairs, and to assure us that we can expect a more normal life in the future.
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No need for wars
By Raffique Shah
December 04, 2024
I expect a bruising political year ahead of us as general election 2025 looms large. The Opposition United National Congress (UNC) has never really stopped campaigning since their loss in 2015. The margins of victory—the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) polled in 2015 and 2020—were close enough to keep the PNM uneasy, but the UNC probably blew it by turning to the courts in constituencies where they were behind by relatively small numbers of votes, causing them to lose goodwill among the electorate.
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As the world turns
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 10, 2024
On June 25, 2016, I wrote in this space: “Nine days ago when I arrived in London I had hoped the UK (United Kingdom) would remain within the European Union… There was some nostalgia there but my wish wasn’t to be…
“Xenophobia won out in the end although there were other concerns. There was the split between the metropolitan heartland and country; the disconnect between the elites and the masses; those who saw themselves as global citizens and those who prized the bulldog, isolationist identity and more conservative England.”
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I feel defeated
By Raffique Shah
July 10, 2024
It bothers me that I woke up from a sleep that was not exactly restful, scanned the early-morning television programmes, switched to international news, saw Britain’s new Prime Minister make his way into 10 Downing Street and I didn’t even know his name. I didn’t know how his Labour Party came to win the election, and what worries me most is that I don’t care. In fact, for much of this year, governments have changed in a manner that should have meant something to the people, if not directly to us in little Trinidad and Tobago, but that too didn’t mean a thing to me.
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Autocracy, not democracy
By Raffique Shah
June 16, 2024
Well before I thought about writing a column on the internal elections in the United National Congress, I deliberately decided that I will not focus on individual candidates but more on the process. In democracies such as ours, there are always several interest groups that comprise the backbone of the parties which differ very little on critical issues such as the economic policies, crime and punishment, education and so on.
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Living to steal another day
By Raffique Shah
May 07, 2024
However lofty the ideals they may shout from the rooftops, when you get down to base, when you reach the gutter where most of them reside, politics is not about ideals. It is about naked power.
Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, wrote in his masterful introduction to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth: They bring nothing new, they create nothing new, they simply regurgitate what their masters fill in their heads. Centuries after the great intellects introduced them to concepts such as democracy, you can hear them in the ex-colonies, now independent states, screaming as if they invented the words, “Government of the people, for the people and by the people”; “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!”
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Corruption’s demonic face
By Raffique Shah
April 23, 2024
In the 40-odd years that I have been writing a weekly newspaper column, I admit that much of my work has been dealing with politicians and corruption. Over the years I have tried to address other issues such as the economy, our education system, crime (how can I not write about crime?), and so on. But I always seem to return to base, in a manner of speaking—meaning politics, politicians and corruption.
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No HOPE, only disappointment
By Raffique Shah
January 16, 2024
Trust Trinis to set the stage for another type of public misbehaviour. It’s as if the near-collapse of good manners and social graces that have led to a behavioural pattern that span the spectrum of classes from young miscreants and criminals, to parliamentarians and holders of public office, have become the norm.
At the state funeral last Tuesday for former prime minister Basdeo Panday, we witnessed some spectacles that would cause shame and disgrace in the average society anywhere in the world. Here in Trinidad, though, we have once again managed to make everything into a joke.
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Principles in politics
By Raffique Shah
November 01, 2023
I know, I know: the words principles and politics hardly go together. They are more like an oxymoron. But fool that I am, until the day I breathe my last, I shall strive, in whatever way I can, to have politicians and their publics see the wisdom of insisting that they find ways, making principles an imperative for those who seek high public office, and for those who put them there.
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