A Lecture by Maureen Warner-Lewis
Wednesday March 7th 2007
Time: 7pm
Venue: National Library, Port of Spain
Bio: Born in Tobago, Warner-Lewis grew up in Trinidad where she received her early education. In 1962, she won a Trinidad and Tobago Scholarship to study English Literature at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. In 1970 she returned to Jamaica to lecture at the Univeristy of the West Indies and dedicated her life to studying the connections between Central Africa and the Caribbean that were forged through slavery.
Continue reading The Significance of African Heritage in Trinidad and Tobago
Ever since the establishment of the Local Organising Committee (LOC) of CWC I never cease to agonise how current politics demoralises cricket and the playing fraternity. Both the Queen’s Park Cricket Club (QPC) and the T&T Cricket Board of Control (T&TCBC) have historically organised and conducted our cricket (Regional and Tests) with success both on and off the field of play. Examine the outstanding double success of the Senior Chutney Soca Cricketers in 2006 and 2007, the Youth League and Sunday Leagues. Have any of the current LOC political implants ever been involved in local cricket administration except peripherally for LOC Chairman Anand Daniel?
With cricket World Cup fever gripping the Caribbean as of this weekend, maybe-just maybe-we’d get a respite from the politicians and the criminals, if only for a month or so. But you never can tell what these dubious breeds would come up with to steal our attention away from the galaxy of cricketing stars in our presence and the excitement of matches to come. It takes one mindless act by some gun-toting or cutlass-wielding jackass to cast the entire region in a bad light on the global stage. Or worse, some stupid statement by a publicity craving politician to stir up a storm, abusing his or her rank to paint a horrible picture of the country.
OPPOSITION United National Congress (UNC) Senator Harry Mungalsingh stoutly defended statements he made to the Upper House on Tuesday that abortion and cash-incentive sterilisation could be measures used in the fight against crime.
Now that election air politics is ubiquitous’ it seems apropos to postulate that there is need for a new genre of politics in TnT. The fact of the matter is that the time has come for the emergence of maturity in the country’s political ethos.
After disbursing a feeding frenzy/political patronage to the tune of $1.6 billion in CEPEP, the PNM Administration has nothing to show except some painted stones from which even the cheap paint has been washed away. The UNC Administration after spending an identical $1.6 billion has an airport to show, large deposits secretly stashed away in foreign bank accounts and supporters facing the courts for alleged theft.
It’s the columnist’s perennial dilemma: what topic to address on a Carnival Sunday? Who reads newspapers around this time anyway? Pan “peongs” in their thousands will be bleary-eyed and either celebrating the sound of steel or fuming over the judges’ decisions from last night’s Panorama finals. Many more who will have attended Friday night’s cacophony, “Soca Monarch”, rendered tone-deaf by noise boxes supreme, are too dazed to do anything but seek out more noise. And the few who have remained sober until now will be psychologically adjusting their systems for the stupor that will start by nightfall.