By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 28, 2024
In Inward Hunger, Eric Williams revealed that on the very day he left the Anglo-America Caribbean Commission on June 21, 1955, he began discussions with members of the Teachers’ Economic and Cultural Association about the formation of a new party in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T)— the People’s National Movement. “The basic strategy,” he said, “pending the discussion and organisation, was to reach the public.”
Continue reading These men of straw…
By Raffique Shah
March 28, 2024
From agent RS07 SSA
Sire,
Further to our brief but focused discussion one year ago, held at your ultra secret chamber, whose location I cannot reveal even if I tried to, I submit my first annual report for the district where I live and where I have spent all my spying life: let’s call it CB07.
Continue reading To my spy Boss: I resign
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 18, 2024
The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago was at his most vulgar on Thursday, March 9, when he sought to scandalise my name at a public meeting at Enterprise, Chaguanas. However, his public performance revealed more about his moral blindness, his public vulgarity, his intellectual narrowness and aggressive narcissism. No one who read my 28-page, carefully footnoted lecture could have arrived at his conclusion.
Continue reading Dr Rowley’s public vulgarity
By Raffique Shah
March 18, 2024
Not long ago, after a few years of trying to recover a relatively small sum of pension that government owed me, I concluded that the public service will never change in its attitude towards work and servicing the population that pays them.
Worse, I think I realised then there are people in the public service who use their positions against citizens who are entitled to hold political allegiance, but mostly citizens could not be bothered with such trivial distractions.
Continue reading Rein in the tax-dodgers
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 12, 2024
Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, will face President Biden, the Democratic nominee, in the next US presidential election. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Trump could win that election. Most of the polls, including the prestigious New York Times/Siena College poll, have given Trump a 2% lead over President Biden.
Continue reading The dangerous Mr Trump
By Raffique Shah
March 12, 2024
Only a fool, a fanatical partisan politician, or an academic seeking to enter the profession of predicting election results would venture to predict the results of the next Trinidad and Tobago general election, due sometime over the next year or so. I have watched with interest how incumbent prime minister Dr Keith Rowley gave his first signal, when at one of his party’s meetings last week he spent some minutes on the topic and declared the election will be “the most serious you have ever taken part in”. I found that statement intriguing: every election is important.
Continue reading Election bell ringing
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 05, 2024
It was one of those trips that I find particularly gruesome. On Tuesday, I travelled from Boston, USA, to Edmonton, Canada, via Minneapolis, to participate in a conference, “Pan Africanism: Decolonising the University Curriculum”, at the University of Alberta. When I arrived, the temperature was -15°F. It was freezing cold.
This conference was organised by Prof Andy McKnight, a University of Alberta Distinguished Professor, who comes from an outstanding academic and political Caribbean family. He is related to Sir Grantley Adams, the first premier of Barbados and only president of the short-lived West Indian Federation; and Tom Adams, the son of Grantley Adams and second prime minister of that island.
Continue reading Decolonising the Euro-American universities’ curriculum
By Raffique Shah
March 05, 2024
When I was informed last week of the passing of the man known universally as D’Prive—ex-Private Winston Nurse—I went into an introspective mode for just about a minute, and then my mind drifted to The King. Not Charlo or any other monarch. This king is the lead character in the author James Clavell’s novel, King Rat.
D’Prive and I had shared a private joke over my observation that he shared similarities with Corporal King, the main character in this epic novel set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore. King Rat was one of Clavell’s most colourful creations. He—not the generals and other high-ranked personnel, some of whom were of royal stock, and all of whom were of the officer caste—called the shots in almost every way, the exception being that he could not leave.
Continue reading D’Prive who was a King