Category Archives: PNM

Crime in T&T, General T&T, Law, Murder, PNM, Politics, Violence

Cultural & Environmental Violence

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 20, 2019

“I bear a grudge that we in Trinidad do not pay enough attention to our heroes. They are the people that will give Trinidad life.”

—Beryl McBurnie quoted in Judy Raymond, Beryl McBurnie

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThere has been much coverage about the horrible murder of the prime minister’s boyhood friend John Miles and his wife Eulyn at the hands of a monstrously deranged person. This dastardly act led the PM to bemoan: “What have we become? What are we producing as ‘the next generation’? John and I grew up together in poverty, with pride, but violence and criminality were never part of our life” (Express, May 4).
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General T&T, PNM, UNC, WASA

WASA’s crime against communities

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By Raffique Shah
May 08, 2019

Raffique ShahIf we agree with the adage a picture tells a thousand words, then by extrapolation, given the immense advances in information technology, a website, especially one belonging to a public utility like the Water and Sewerage Authority, ought to have billions of megabytes of data that are readily available to the public at the click of a computer mouse.
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General T&T, Hinduism, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, Religion, UNC

Calcuttising Sat’s Message To Tobagonians

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By Stephen Kangal
May 01, 2019

Stephen KangalIt is patently clear that Prime Minister Rowley grabbed the quite innocuous, viewed from a local context, but attention-attracting Sat Statement and attempted to clothe it with the now infamous Calcutta Ship robes geared to arrest the declining support for the PNM in Tobago from the rise and rise of the Duke factor.

It was engineered to achieve the same electoral result as Sandy’s 2013 Statement and to nip the incipient electoral fortunes of Minority Leader Watson Duke in the bud.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, PNM, Police

Wage war against criminals, not the media

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By Raffique Shah
April 30, 2019

Raffique ShahGary Griffith’s unilateral declaration of a “cold war” on the conventional media in general, and the CCN Group in particular, was as predictable as it was inevitable. As a garrulous ex-military officer whose larger-than-life public image was literally forged by and in the mass media, he failed to understand that unlike publicists who are paid to promote a product or personality, successful media houses thrive on their fierce independence in disseminating news and views.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, Religion, UNC

Vilifying the Messenger of Tobago Productivity Message

By Stephen Kangal
April 23, 2019

Stephen KangalThe comments of Sat Maharaj on poor productivity practices that stultify and retard the economic development of Tobago including its current justification for exercising greater autonomy were substantially no different from those uttered by Dr Rita Pemberton, THA Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles and Tobago East MP the Hon Ayana Webster- Roy. In fact Mr Maharaj in his well-known, call a spade a spade modus operandi was using language derived directly from the work ethic statements issued by these Tobagonian speakers recently.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Recession, UNC

The Dog and the Bone

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 22, 2019

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOver the past year, Ralph Maraj, a fellow columnist, has been a tick in PNM’s behind. He isn’t always wrong in his commentaries—even a broken clock is correct at least twice a day—but his obsessive fascination with PNM’s failures leads one to question his objectivity and the distorting lens of his overwrought rhetoric.

Last Sunday he listed everything PNM has done wrong during its tenure and why he is heartened by UNC’s plans as it prepares to govern from 2020.
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General T&T, Oil and Gas, PNM, Politics

Government must come clean on future of oil industry

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By Raffique Shah
April 02, 2019

Raffique ShahThe Keith Rowley Government needs to stop playing the ox with what little is left of the oil industry in Trinidad and Tobago. A few weeks ago, chairman of the successor company to Petrotrin, Wilfred Espinet, inadvertently (according to Energy Minister Franklin Khan) invited “interested parties who possess the requisite energy sector expertise and substantial financial resources” to apply for an initial marketing document regarding the proposed sale of Guaracara Refining Company (GRC) and Paria Fuel Trading Company (PFTC).
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corruption, General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Beware: nasty election campaigns ahead

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By Raffique Shah
March 20, 2019

Raffique ShahIf you thought that Vernella Alleyne-Toppin had plumbed the depth of depravity when, in the run-up to the 2015 general election, the then Tobago East MP launched the most scurrilous, vulgar attack on People’s National Movement leader Dr Keith Rowley, believe me, you haven’t seen the nastiest political campaigning yet.

Alleyne-Toppin had been allowed by House Speaker Wade Mark all the time she needed to allege that Rowley was a biological product of rape, and that he, in turn, would later end up committing the heinous crime to father a son. The alleged victims openly denied Toppin’s baseless charges, which were read into Hansard in the presence of her political leader, then Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and other People’s Partnership parliamentary colleagues, none of whom intervened to stop the nastiness.
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General T&T, International, PNM, Politics, UNC, USA, Venezuela

Kamla’s Position on Venezuela Ascended the High Moral Ground

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By Stephen Kangal
March 09, 2019

Stephen KangalIn the face of rapidly unfolding political and diplomatic events globally and the current isolation of T&T for its ill-advised decision to recognize unwittingly and side with the internationally denounced illegal and illegitimate regime of Nicolas Maduro bilaterally while pursuing a contradictory neutrality/ non-interference position at the multilateral Caricom and UN levels, it appears to me that Kamla outwitted Prime Minister Rowley in her strategic support for Interim President Juan Guaido.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, UNC

While I Am Here!

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 25, 2019

“Until all races see each other as brothers and sisters and not as competitors or enemies Trinidad and Tobago is not going to move forward.”

—Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI congratulate the Hon. Kamla Persad-Bissessar for the brave speech on race relations in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) that she delivered on Monday, February 11. While I do not agree totally with the accuracy of her “short history lesson,” thinking in and of the future is much more important than being mired in the commess of the present. Demeaning Persad-Bissessar’s important insights by castigating the probity of her having Malone Hughes, a brother who was charged and fined several times , on her platform does a disservice to a brilliant analysis of our present condition. It reduces a pressing existentialist issue to a misguided rant about non-sense.
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