Category Archives: PNM

Answer me, oh my friend

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, September 6th 2009
www.trinicenter.com/Raffique

Kamaluddin MohammedIN this post-national-awards week and on pre-budget day, most of my columnist colleagues would focus on one topic or other. There is a whole lot to be said about the awards system, much of which has already been ventilated. The issue I found most amusing was the brouhaha over Kamal “Charch” Mohammed being nominated for the nation’s highest award, but being denied it by those on high.
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Executive President, yes…elected by the people

By Raffique Shah
August 23, 2009
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

Raffique ShahListening to well-informed people, some of them respected intellectuals, argue against a system of government that allows for an executive president, intrigues me. They invariably pursue their arguments using fancy-words-work, but essentially they are little different to the barely-informed masses, who, on the eve of Trinidad and Tobago adopting a republican constitution in 1976, cried “bloody murder” over that minor change in our system of governance.
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Rudi wanted to lead PNM

By George Alleyne
August 19, 2009 – newsday.co.tt

www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

Basdeo PandayThe scarcely concealed leadership battle in the United National Congress (UNC) between the Party’s Political Leader, Basdeo Panday, and one of its Deputy Political Leaders, Jack Warner, as to which of them will command the UNC in the immediate days ahead is not uncommon to Caribbean politics.
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The Israel Khan affair

Newsday Editorial
Saturday, August 15 2009

www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

Israel KhanIt was an imperative that Israel Khan should have recused himself from the Uff Commission of Inquiry into Udecott and the Construction Industry. The ten-page letter which he issued to Udecott’s attorneys some days ago appeared to pre-judge the personalities and the issues before the Commission. As a Commissioner, Mr Khan should not have been giving vent to such opinions prior to having them stated in the body of the eventual Commissioners’ Report.
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Paranoid Prime Minister

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, August 2nd 2009

www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

PM Patrick ManningI often wonder what grave sins we Trinidadians and Tobagonians have committed to warrant the kinds of politicians we have been saddled with for generations. It’s not that they are the worst in the world, although some people may swear they are. Look at it this way: we could have had really brutal dictators like the monsters who have wreaked untold suffering on billions of people across the planet. Mercifully for us, we have been spared that kind of horror.
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PM Tells of a Plot to Assassinate Him

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A PLOT TO KILL ME
PM tells of shocking event before coup anniversary last year
By Anna Ramdass – Published: 28 Jul 2009
PM Patrick ManningPrime Minister Patrick Manning claimed last night that there was a plot to assassinate him last year. Speaking at the PNM’s meeting in Arima, Manning reminded the crowd of an incident that took place in July last year, when a marked police vehicle attempted to “peel off” one his security detail vehicles as he and his wife, Local Government Minister Hazel Manning, were on the way to the gym.
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Another look at 1990 coup

By George Alleyne
July 22, 2009 – newsday.co.tt

www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

1990 Coup: Yasin Abu Bakr is arrestedAny Inquiry into the July 27, 1990 attempted coup by the Jamaat al Muslimeen should seek to find out who was behind the supplying of the then militant group with weapons and ammunition, who orchestrated the move to seize power and was the planned coup specifically designed to overthrow the leadership of the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) Government.
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‘Ethnic cleansing’ of Whom in T&T?

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
July 19, 2009

www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

DoctorsThe recent accusation by UNC’s Dr. Tim Gopeesingh of “ethnic cleansing” of Indian-Trinbagonian, not Indo-Trinbagonian, doctors at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital at the supposed hands of the PNM-Manning administration, smacks of an innocuous similarity of “reverse discrimination” by Euro-White Americans whenever African-Americans seem to make some modicum of socioeconomic progress.
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‘PoS General, an African hospital’

By Sean Douglas
July 18, 2009 – newsday.co.tt

www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

Dr. Tim GopeesinghCARONI East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh alleged an “ethnic cleansing” of Indo-Trinidadian doctors at Port-of-Spain General Hospital (PoSGH), but Leader of Government Business, Colm Imbert, dismissed these charges as “scandalous, false and outrageous.”

The heated exchange shook up a dull debate on the Emergency Ambulance Services and Emergency Medical Personnel Bill 2009 as amended by the Senate.
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A conscience vote

By George Alleyne
July 15, 2009 – newsday.co.tt

www.trinidadandtobagonews.com

Jack WarnerIssues of personal conscience with respect to policy positions held by two of the nation’s legislators — Independent Senator Gail Merhair and Opposition United National Congress Chaguanas West Member of Parliament, Austin “Jack” Warner — have dominated national public issues thinking within recent days. Senator Merhair, with respect not only to her support of the controversial Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill, but the comments she made immediately prior to her casting of her vote, and Mr Warner’s voting in favour of Government’s Securities Bill 2009.
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