A sideshow? Nothing more?

By Winford James
March 07, 2012

ParliamentIn the end, as in the beginning, Keith Rowley’s motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister was a sideshow. It failed as it was bound to. It unified the executive and brought out their full armoury. It unified the Opposition and brought out some kind of offence. It won Dr Rowley a small political advantage and probably much more embarrassment. It gave the executive a golden opportunity to keep in the public consciousness the PNM’s “corruption, waste and inefficiency”. It unleashed, one more time, the executive’s politics of excess.
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Roget Makes the First Move

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 07, 2012

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeRoodlal Moonilal and the UNC-led coalition were quick to use Louis Lee Sing’s letter to demean Kieth Rowley. As it turned out, this was much to Louis’ misfortune and a mis-calculation on his part. But God is a good God. Sometimes out of evil commeth good and out of malevolence commeth comity; that is, the recognition among members of a social community that they possess values of decency and fair play that transcend the meanness and commess of a vagabond entity. Ultimately, that is what Anil Roberts’ amendment of the No Confidence motion was all about.
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Mathur Dealing in Psycho-Cultural Falsities

By Stephen Kangal
March 07, 2012

Stephen KangalWriting in her Sunday Guardian column of January 22, Ira Mathur a naturalized citizen of T&T but Indian, was born of military middle class parentage completely detached from the reach of the systems of Caribbean indenture-ship and slavery. She has unwittingly and falsely included herself as a victim of that system.
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Crime pay$ big buck$

By Raffique Shah
March 04, 2012

Raffique ShahCRIME pays. Big time. And big bucks. We always knew that. Mostly, when we think of profiteering off criminal activities, we think of criminals and attorneys, one breed often indistinguishable from the other. The ties that bind them are the blood, sweat and tears of the victims of crime, mainly innocent people who work hard to provide the basics for their families, only to be relieved of their material possessions, at times their lives, by ruthless criminals.
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A Chink in the Armor

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 01, 2012

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeWhatever else Keith Rowley may not be doing, he has certainly put the fear of God, or is it Lord Rama, into the hearts of the members of the UNC-led Government. Surujrattan Rambachan, the Foreign Minister, says that Rowley’s motion is “vexatious, frivolous and irrelevant.” Yet the UNC has undertaken to conduct three public meetings to mobilize its base and every one of its twenty-nine members of parliarment are slated to speak on the motion. That does not seem to be the kind of response that one mounts against a vexatious, frivolous and irrelevant motion, but then there is always a disparity between what the UNC says and what it does.
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European Divide and Rule: Afri-centric Analysis

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
February 28, 2012

Dr. Kwame NantambuFor the past five hundred years, the world has been under the sway of what deceased Guyanese anthropologist Dr. Ivan Van Sertima once called the “five hundred year curtain”. This geo-political curtain goes under the rubric of the European system of governance — a paradigm whose spinal cord is Divide & Rule.
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Alleyne Must Curb Fixation For Property Taxation

By Stephen Kangal
February 27, 2012

Author with Dr. Navi Muradali in Harris Promenade
Author with Dr. Navi Muradali in Harris Promenade
Newsday’s prime space columnist, George Alleyne continues to base his mistake-prone obsession on misleading argumentation for the re- imposition of property taxation (Newsday 1 Feb) when it is patently obvious that during the current economic down-turn, Government can and should stimulate consumer confidence and spending power by leaving as much resources in consumer hands and not in the coffers of Government.
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Marketing our music

By Raffique Shah
February 25, 2012

Raffique ShahON Ash Wednesday, two articles in the Express perked me up. In the first, Planning and Development Minister Dr Bhoe Tewarie, interviewed in the Grand Stand, told reporter Anna Ramdass that soca star Machel Montano “should be leading the charge in selling Trinidad and Tobago internationally”. Vowing to pursue this quest at Cabinet level, Dr Tewarie added, “…I think Machel is in a class by himself… we should try to support an external thrust led by Machel in the world outside…”
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