Category Archives: UNC

General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

LGE: Political Veterans Last Hurrah

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By Raffique Shah
July 31, 2023

Raffique ShahThe two main political parties in Trinidad and Tobago are taking the local government election, scheduled for two weeks tomorrow, very seriously. I expected the opposition United National Congress to maintain its momentum, which it has kept at a steady pace since it lost the 2015 general election, to keep the tempo going since it gained a few seats and the popular votes for its unrelenting pressure on the ruling People’s National Movement.
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Elections, General T&T, Opposition Party, Parliament, PNM, Property Tax, UNC

‘Informed’ voters will decide election

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By Raffique Shah
May 30, 2023

Raffique ShahNot for the first time in its 67-year history, the People’s National Movement goes into a local government election as the underdog. In 2019, as I recall it, the main opposition United National Congress, and some other parties with which it had forged alliances of sorts, seemed confident they would flog the PNM in the wake of a sluggish national economy, job cuts and its failure to secure support for local government reforms that intended to increase the powers of the municipal corporations.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Is Trinidad a real place?

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 20, 2023

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeLast Sunday, Terrence Farrell, one of our premier public intellectuals, sought to explain why some people say that “Trinidad is not a real place”. Speaking of the mess in which Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard found himself when he dismissed the Piarco airport corruption case, Farrell observed that it is these failures that prompt our frustration and “give weight to epithets such as ‘Trinidad is not a real place'” (Sunday Express, March 12).
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

A Wasteland of Hubris

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By Raffique Shah
March 20, 2023

Raffique ShahYou will think that a political party anywhere in the world that commands the lead stories in at least two national television newscasts per week; add for measure twenty-plus radio stations, most of which are ethnically weighted in favour of the party’s support base; three daily newspapers that go the extra mile to be fair to you, with even your lies making the cut, unlimited social media posts on the various sites, again in your favour… The party stages at least one public meeting per week that is also broadcast live on radio and at times, on television; flavor the above with, on balance unlimited parliament broadcasts that you control, if only by the volume, antics and other eye-catching tricks; sundry anti-government public meetings, often staged or influenced by the party’s activists that sometimes generate their own free media access, and so on…
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General T&T, PNM, UNC

The cries of our people

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 29, 2022

“The horner man crying; Somebody horn de horner man…”
—Anil Roberts on Keith Rowley

“I could take a horn if I get one. I ain’t sending nobody to kill nobody.”
—Dr Keith Rowley’s response to Roberts

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThese are the sentiments of two of our leaders on the eve of the Diamond jubilee of our Independence. Serious people treated Roberts’ characterisation of Sharon Clark-Rowley, the prime minister’s wife, with the disdain that it deserved. There was no reason to drag her into the gutter, as there was no need to elevate such spurious nonsense to the level of serious national discourse. As we say—if you play with the dog, you get bitten by the fleas.
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Elections, General T&T, Labour, PNM, Politics, Russia, UNC

Show me your leader

By Raffique Shah
August 29, 2022

Raffique ShahIt’s not so much that we have little or nothing to celebrate on the 60th anniversary of our Independence from Britain, as so many who swear they are patriots, but whose patriotism swings with the pendulum of their political party’s fortunes, which almost always are linked to their personal fortunes.

It’s more that our democracy has been carved up into near-equal but uneven parts in such manner, to misquote Irish poet William Yeats in his near-prophetic masterpiece, “The Second Coming”, “…Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction/While the worst/Are full of passionate intensity…”
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Let’s try ah madman instead

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By Raffique Shah
August 01, 2022

Raffique ShahI do not believe the people of Trinidad and Tobago, least of all those whose votes matter in a near-evenly-divided electorate, are ready for a leader who has the fortitude to take the resource-rich though now declining economy out of the cycles of poverty, stagnation and prosperity, to put it firmly on track such that it steers as close as is possible to an equitable distribution of its wealth—or suffering—and in the painful process deliver us from the evils of free-wheeling capitalism and neo-liberalism that coagulates into one of the filthy-rich, dirt-poor extremities that are imploding across the world, their populations equally stripped of all hope as ours is, the only difference being this time we go down with the ship since there are no alternative options.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, UNC

Circling like corbeaux

By Raffique Shah
July 25, 2022

Raffique ShahNothing defined the great dividing line in this country the way the Law Association lawyers’ motion to have Attorney General Reginald Armour resign from office did when it came before the legal fraternity two weeks ago.

As people with an iota of common sense will have noted, while there was an element of race in the proceedings, it was not the only, or even the main factor that drove the campaign to oust the AG. It was all political—a straight case of who in the profession supported the incumbent PNM Government, or who supported the Opposition UNC. The stench of politics in what can be said to have been a minor confrontation was overpowering.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity, Racism Watch, UNC

Doh mess with ma name

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 13, 2022

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeAkan people of Ghana, from which my lineage springs, have a naming ceremony eight or ten days after a child is born. It is called the Outdoor Ceremony, where the child is brought into the outdoors to see the light of day.

During that ceremony, the child is given a name that confers a specific identity upon him or her. Not a tear is shed if that child dies before the naming ceremony. It is as if that entity never existed, so precious is a person’s name in that society.
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Finance, General T&T, Oil and Gas, Opposition Party, Politics, Recession, UNC

The screw and screwdriver

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By Raffique Shah
April 25, 2022

Raffique ShahBy late last Tuesday eve­ning, the universe seemed to me to have remained intact as we have known it from creation, or more accurately, since we arrived on it—vast, mysterious, constantly moving—and the Earth did not stand still, as some politicians had hoped would happen, in a celestial display of anger by the gods against satanic price increases in auto fuels imposed by the heartless Government of Trinidad and Tobago on its people.
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