By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 15, 2014
It was one of those riveting moments when a picture is worth more than a thousand words. Here they were, four young black boys, sitting forlorn, with their luggage around them looking as if their lives had come to an end. All their yearnings seemed to have been dashed, caught up as they were, in an unutterable moment of disappointment: their being unable to compete in a football tournament in Barbados.
Continue reading Take de Money and Run
By Raffique Shah
December 14, 2014
Some nights ago, a television news reporter covering one of the Prime Minister’s toys distribution functions asked eight children what they would like to get as Christmas presents. All seemed to be between ages five and ten. One boy said he wanted a truck and a girl screamed, “A doll house!”
Continue reading Slaves to digital devices
By Stephen Kangal
December 02, 2014
Taxpayers cannot sit silent and allow a potential Torouba Stadium debacle to overwhelm us motorists and commuters in Curepe. It is very clear that VINCI, a Belgian Company has established an unequalled track record of delivering two imposing and state of the art overpasses in Aranguez and at the Grand Bazaar intersection on time and within budgets.
Continue reading Taxpayers Must Intervene in the Curepe Interchange
By Raffique Shah
December 07, 2014
“This is PNM country. The black African king anointed by the blood of Jesus Christ has decreeded (sic) that is we time again. We Africans will be the masa (sic) and the rest ah allya (sic) will be we slaves. Starting today the terror shall begin for all allya coolie and chin who feel allya better than we. Today is just a flat tire.”
For those who are reading or hearing about it for the first time, the idiotic but poisonous verses quoted above, with the PNM insignia inserted above them, formed a “flyer” that some patrons at MovieTowne found stuck to their vehicle windscreens last Saturday night. In instances, the victims found their tyres deflated.
Continue reading Satanic race-verses
By Raffique Shah
November 30, 2014
In the current oil prices turmoil that has sparked much speculation, rumours of doom and gloom, and seeming indifference on the part of Government, the few in the country who know and understand what’s happening at the global level owe it to the nation to let their voices be heard.
We cannot believe the politicians. Over the past few months, as the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude slipped from US$105 a barrel in June to below US$70 a barrel last week, Finance Minister Larry Howai and Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine were singing, “Don’t worry, be happy!”
Continue reading Politics and oil—a deadly cocktail
By Stephen Kangal
November 26, 2014
An underlying worrisome diplomatic situation exists today in five of T&T’s Overseas Missions. Diplomatic relations are conducted in accordance with the principle and practices of reciprocity and the comity of Nations. In India, UK, Costa Rica, Canada at the UN T&T representation has been scaled down to the level of junior but also inexperienced young and up-coming diplomats. This resulted from the withdrawal of both career and political appointed Ambassadors.
Continue reading Decline of Our Diplomatic Relations
By Stephen Kangal
November 20, 2014
The Five Caroni Villages long slumbering under the depressing yoke of the PNM’s policy of exclusion, rural isolation, neglect and marginalization has now awakened to the dawn of a new Janaam (era) marked by rapid infrastructural development/transfusion that has created optimism, excitement, expanding employment opportunities and credible hope, more equitable and better life for us in Caroni.
Continue reading PP’s Industrial Transfusion to Caroni
By Raffique Shah
November 16, 2014
The land slippages and other failures that occurred on the newly-opened section of the Solomon Hochoy Highway might be a blessing in disguise if the Government could resist the temptation to play politics with the costliest public works project ever in the country. This is also no time for those who oppose the Debe to Mon Desir segment of the new highway to gloat over the defects, seeing them as “karma” or punishment for the Government for proceeding with construction even as protestor Wayne Kublalsingh remains at death’s door in his marathon hunger strike.
Continue reading Backward ever, forward never
Newsday Editorial
November 14, 2014 – newsday.co.tt
THE SITUATION in Guyana is one with which all nations in the region should be concerned. Guyana is an important trading partner. Trinidad and Tobago, for instance, exported an estimated $1.1 billion worth of products to the country over the period 2007 to 2010 and for that period imported $596 million in products. Additionally, both governments have recently partnered on initiatives and incentives to reduce the food import bill and boost production, with plans to make large tracts of land in Guyana available to Trinidad and Tobago agriculturalists.
Continue reading Keeping Guyana calm
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
November 10, 2014
One of the least noticed events in the nature of the political beast in Trinidad and Tobago is the overt attempt by the leader of the People’s National Movement (PNM) and Opposition Leader in Parliament, Dr. Keith Rowley to woo the Indian vote in the upcoming 2015 general elections.
Indeed, one of Dr. Rowley’s first political-electoral actions was to mend fences with his former boss and former PNM leader Patrick Manning. Of course, no one was fooled by Dr. Rowley’s public farce, period. It tantamounted to a puerile exercise in futility on Dr. Rowley’s part.
Continue reading Rowley’s attempt to woo Indian vote