By Raffique Shah
Sunday, July 20th 2008
CRY wolf, the adage goes, and you may just get your wish when you least expect it. I am reminded of the story of the little shepherd boy every time I read or hear someone say that Prime Minister Patrick Manning has morphed into a Mugabe. Are these people for real? I ask myself: do they really understand what a murderous, mindless dictator is, what he is capable of subjecting his country and people to?
Continue reading Cry wolf, get a dictator
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 18, 2008
T&T’s Press is so intent on demonizing Patrick Manning that sometimes it seems incapable of carrying a balanced story about any event that concerns him. Anyone who did not attend PNM’s 42nd Convention could not have hoped to get a balanced account of what transpired there last weekend if they only read accounts of same in the press. But as one poet suggested, none is so blind as he who would not to see.
Continue reading Demonizing Patrick Manning
By Sean Douglas
Monday, July 14 2008
newsday.co.tt
PRIME Minister Patrick Manning, despite his strenuous denials, could well make a second bid to become TT’s Executive President after he presented the 42nd PNM Annual Convention at Chaguaramas with extracts of a “working paper” that looked suspiciously like a second version of his Draft Constitution which provoked a public outcry in 2006.
The latest document proposes not only a “presidential system of Government” in Manning’s own words, but also seems to severely curtail the independence of the Parliament, Cabinet, Judiciary, Office of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), and Permanent Secretaries in the Public Service.
Continue reading Manning’s second bid for presidency
By Raffique Shah
July 13, 2008
As if this country is not burdened by more than its fair share of woes, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry over expressions of outrage by those who see the sky caving in on Trinidad and Tobago because government postponed Local Government elections for the third time. What, pray, is the big fuss over staging local elections? The municipalities and corporations continue to exist-note I did not say function-as they always have, elections or no elections. In other words, they did nothing to benefit citizens during their official tenure. And they continue to do nothing as they await reforms promised by the Government since 2002.
Continue reading Abolish Local Govt
By Corey Gilkes
July 10, 2008
I just had to comment on last Sunday’s Express article by Ms Sheila Rampersad in which she expressed her great disappointment over Education Minister Esther Le Gendre’s attack on Mickela Panday in Parliament.
With all due respect to Ms Rampersad, I found her expectations of Ms Le Gendre and indeed the whole idea of women’s solidarity in our political context were naive to say the least. To any person who really looks at the political culture in Trinidad, the rest of the Caribbean and the North Atlantic – from where we have aped our political models and institutions – it should be quite clear that simply having women in the corridors of political power (a la the “Put a Woman in the Parliament” campaign) would not have amounted to much. Such naivete is right up there with the view that simply having a black man as President or Prime Minister means that now we have someone with Africentric values in a position of power that was created by the Eurocentric power structure.
Continue reading What Were you Expecting from Minister Le Gendre?
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 10, 2008
The following headline was blazoned across the July issue of The Anglican Outlook: “Hundreds say Farewell, Canon Griffith,” the former pastor of St. Clement’s Anglican Church. The photograph that accompanied the story showed his colleagues carrying his casket to its final resting place. Bishop Calvin Best presided at the Holy Eucharist while Lystra Bernice Griffith Brown, the canon’s daughter, delivered the eulogy.
Continue reading Calling Pastor Kwame in his Right Name
By Stephen Kangal
July 08, 2008
I was in employment in the Public Service during the period when the meritocracy factor slowly and surreptitiously began to assert itself as the preferred alternative criterion to seniority as the determining consideration to effect promotions. This development constituted as an aspect of Performance Management in Public Service Reform.
That reform was driven by Gordon Draper’s “Management by Objectives” proposal designed to upgrade the Confidential Reports of public servants.
Continue reading Exploding the Myth of Meritocracy
By Michael De Gale
July 08, 2008
T&T is not a failed state; it is a state whose socio/economic policies, ineffective leadership and lack of vision is failing its citizens. It is a state which has consistently failed to effectively integrate large sections of the African and East Indian populations into the wealth creating mechanism that would give them a stake in the country. This failure manifests itself in misdirected values, social deviance, questionable morals and increasing violence. Consequently, with the exception of the elite, a struggling middle class and an increasing number of foreigners, the great majority of citizens in this small but oil rich nation remain poor; marginally more than hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Continue reading Poverty is Not a Virtue
Police were on a manhunt in Central Trinidad last night, after another toddler was murdered.
Three-year-old Roshni Ramdial, was pronounced dead on arrival at Chaguanas Health Centre. The child was beaten.
Roshni’s death followed the deaths of several other children who were attacked and killed during the past few months.
It was only last Wednesday, in Mayaro, that nine-month-old Rakeem Ricardo Clarke was clobbered to death with a dabla—thick wooden paddle used to flip roti.
A man and a woman were, up to late yesterday, assisting police in that investigation, pending an autopsy today.
Continue reading Another Central toddler murdered
by Raffique Shah
Sunday, July 6th 2008
LAST Friday, the House of Representatives debated a motion to confirm or strike down the Police Service Commission’s (PSC) nominee for the position of Commissioner of Police, Senior Superintendent Stephen Williams. Speculation was rife beforehand that the Government would reject Williams on the premise that he was too young for the top job, that the selection process was flawed.
Continue reading A mess of its own making