Category Archives: Politics

General T&T, Politics, UNC

Kamla’s second coming: a blessing

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 31, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeSOMETHING extraordinary happened two Fridays ago. Kamla Persad-Bissessar—the Mother of our Nation, as I call her—went to Woodford Square to thank her supporters. Her supporters from Tobago chanted: “Thank you, Kamla, the Mother of our Nation. We love you, Mother.”

Such adulation signalled that Trinidad and Tobago is evolving to another stage of social development. It reminds me of “The Chambered Nautilus”, a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Snr, that explores themes of growth and change. The last stanza reads: “Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul /As the swift seasons roll! / Leave thy low-vaulted past! / Let each new temple, nobler than the last, / Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, / Till thou at length art free, / Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!”
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General T&T, Politics

Is this what we want?

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By Raffique Shah
May 31, 2025

Raffique ShahI have said this—what I’m about to write here—a hundred times over the past 20 years or so that we have marked and celebrated Indian Arrival Day.

First, I was among a vocal minority who expressed the strong view that the holiday in recognition of the arrival of Indian immigrants on the Fatel Razack in 1845 bringing the first indentured immigrants to Trinidad and Tobago, be named Arrival Day.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics

Vaulting ambition & PNM’s reincarnation

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 24, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThe cracks in the PNM’s hegemony became more prominent after its defeat in the last general election. Power and cowardice hid these fissures for a long time. All one sees within the PNM now is “vaulting ambition, which o’er-leaps itself/ And falls on th’ other”. (Macbeth) This reckless ambition will lead the party into an abyss.

After the PNM’s political disaster, the former Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow accused Dr Amery Browne of ingratitude after Browne suggested they could “rig the game but can’t fake authenticity”. Robert Le Hunte says of the Leader’s imposition of Stuart Young on the party: “It wasn’t just cynical. It was obscene. It was perverse.” (Express, May 10.)
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General T&T, Politics

No easy road to national unity

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By Raffique Shah
May 24, 2025

Raffique ShahThere was almost unison in the plaintive cry in the appeals for national unity by a significant section of the population. This festival of nation building and patriotic songs and music, that was a treat by itself. I know this country is gifted with a prolific compilation of rich ballads, lyrics and music that can “make mih pores raise”, as Trinidadians and Tobagonians are wont to say.

The occasion was the inaugural meeting of the 13th Parliament of the Republic. Time was when this was a routine parade for the military and other top brass who paraded. When Independence Day coincided with such sitting, pomp and ceremony oozed out of the uniforms of service officers and other ranks.
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Elections, General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Why I will vote UNC

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 12, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeBy 1959, party politics had taken hold on the people of Trinidad and Tobago. Michael Kangalee (he now calls himself Krishna, his middle name), my schoolmate at Tacarigua EC, supported the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that was led by Bhadase Sagan Maraj. I supported PNM, which was led by Eric Williams. Neither of us could vote but we followed our parents and villagers’ preference in expressing our party allegiances. Undoubtedly, our political position was shaped in part by our racial (not racist) affiliation. Years later, I went to the United States, and Krishna went on to live in Canada via England.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics

PNM leaps ahead

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By Raffique Shah
March 22, 2025

Raffique ShahWhen the history of politics in Trinidad and Tobago is written, those who are shaping our future and those who are making our history will be alarmed at how easily an epoch was erased, how a new era almost slid past the hands of historians, with hardly a note written about it. Not even the men and women who were reshaping our history were aware of this momentous change, focused as they were on winning an election.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics

Absolute foolishness

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 01, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe“Absolute foolishness.” Those were the words the Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow used when he described “the heavy foreign exchange spending on Carnival costumes…He insists that costumes are not investments” (Guardian, February 26). Such statements are “absolute nonsense” and “absolute foolishness” combined in one.
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General T&T, Politics

Intentional distraction

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 08, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeNostalgia led me to the People’s National Movement Mani­festo of 1991, the year it defeated the National Alliance for Reconstruction. The PNM returned to government in 1991 but lost power to the United National Congress in 1995. A year later, the Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow challenged Patrick Manning’s leadership and lost. His rise to national prominence began at that point. The Leader will leave the political scene in a few weeks but will retain his influence on his protégé, Stuart Young.
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General T&T, Politics

Be thankful for Rowley

By Raffique Shah
January 11, 2025

Raffique ShahIt would be quite a thing if the leadership succession issue in the ruling People’s National Movement were to erupt into something akin to war, while the party has often been described as the best organised in the Caribbean.

I had planned this column before Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced his proposed resignation, and subsequently the naming of his successor, Energy Minister Stuart Young. That grabbed national attention and with it, controversy, before I could write. But that is politics for you—unpredictable in the most stable of times and immutable in the worst of times.
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