By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 19, 2018
I sympathize with Camille Robinson-Regis’s concerns about the inability of some commentators “to declare their political hand” before offering their scathing criticism against the PNM or even their reluctance to mention some of PNM’s achievements (see Letter of the Day, Express, March 10).
Continue reading PNM ‘Till Ah Dead; Maybe!
By Stephen Kangal
February 21, 2018
Today Friday 16 February 2018 I made my third visit for this week to the fabulous and awesome natural ambience of St Augustine Nurseries located West of Southern Main and Farm Roads in Curepe.
I have agonized at the potential and real destruction and bull-dozing of the beautiful natural and plant assets domiciled here for over one hundred years in this part of our landed patrimony that was in fact a workshop of nature generating flowers and food to all who visited.
Continue reading Arresting the Decline Into HDC Madness
By Raffique Shah
February 21, 2018
As Government wrestles with seemingly intractable problems that bedevil the Trinidad-Tobago sea-bridge, and with the public’s focus riveted on which ferry might be operational on any given day and how many passengers or vehicles are left stranded at either port, the population could be easily blindsided to a looming disaster-in-the-making, the Prime Minister’s pet project—a port/ferry terminal in Toco, and a new main road from Valencia to Toco.
Continue reading Toco port: let PM put his money where his mouth is
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 20, 2018
“…a state could never have been born without surplus.” —Yanis Varoufakis
Reading Ralph Maraj and Kamal Persad’s contributions, one would think that Eric Williams and the PNM were the worst things that ever happened to Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). They seem to suggest that if only Badase Sagan Maraj and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had won the 1956 general election T&T would have been a paradise.
Continue reading Contradictions & Counterfactuals – Pt 3
By Stephen Kangal
February 15, 2018
The news of the proposed surreptitious plan hatched by the HDC to further desecrate and destroy the peaceful ambience, luxuriant foliage and agricultural input of the St Augustine Nursery to establish another voter-padding housing settlement in the St Joseph constituency must be resisted by all environmentalists and the residents of Curepe-St Joseph with full civic society force.
Continue reading Desecrating the Idyllic Nursery of Life
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 13, 2018
“…a state could never have been born without surplus.” —Yanis Varoufakis
PART 1 — PART 2
In the nineteenth century Trinidad saw the first massive giveaway of lands and bonuses to the Indians in lieu of their passages to India. Those options were never available to Africans. This was the first step in the systematic dispossession of Africans in the land to which they had been brought. Few of us seem to remember it.
Fast-forward to one hundred and thirty years (around the year 2003) when a PNM government engineered another massive giveaway of lands, which is taking place in front of our eyes under the faulty premise that Indians had the first preference because they farmed the lands. This was/is strange logic since these lands belong to all nationals.
Continue reading Contradictions & Counterfactuals – Pt 2
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 08, 2018
“…a state could never have been born without surplus.” —Yanis Varoufakis
PART 1
V. I. Lenin, revolutionary and philosopher, believed that contradictions are inherent in everything we do. He argued: “Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradictions in the very essence of objects.”
Consider this: At the same time a PNM government (read black government) gives out 14,492 acres of land to ex-Caroni Ltd., workers (mostly Indo-Trinidadians) at a cost of $5 billion (Guardian, January 27), Kamal Persad claims that over the last 48 years PNM’s policies and programs “were directed towards the advancement of the black supporters of the PNM. [Eric] Williams’s intention was to create a local black professional middle and upper class to effectively replace the whites” (Express, January 24).
Continue reading Contradictions and Counterfactuals
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 30, 2018
I am a bit stunned—ashamed is a better word—that the prime minister admits his inability to combat the most existential problem that faces our country. The prime minister declares: “I have noted the number of murders taking place and being reported in the newspaper daily…. I am being held responsible when it is the police service that has the power and authority to go after the criminals.”
Continue reading Abdicating One’s Responsibility
By Raffique Shah
January 24, 2018
The passing of former President Max Richards, coinciding as it did with the unanimous vote by parliamentarians to elect retired Justice Paula Mae Weekes as the first female and new President of the Republic, seems to have triggered a measure of hope among some citizens that the nation can be rescued from its downhill slide by the eminence of the Head of State.
Continue reading Bad omen for new President
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 15, 2018
As quiet as it is kept, women have always shaped our social and cultural identity. They have been the doers, recipients of the most brutal treatment at the hands of their oppressors and their mates, and a spur towards our liberation and development over the last two hundred years. Unfortunately, they do not always get the credit they deserve in our man-centered world.
Continue reading This Woman Can Be Great