Former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday’s conviction and sentence have been squashed. The Court of Appeal this afternoon ordered a new trial at the Magistrate’s Court before a different Magistrate. Mr. Panday was sentenced to two years in jail and fined by Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls after being found guilty of not declaring a Million Dollar London bank account to the Integrity Commission.
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Category Archives: Politics
Manning owes Panday a puja
By Raffique Shah
March 11, 2007
One cannot help but look on with disbelief at the meanderings in the matter involving the State and Chief Justice Sat Sharma. Last Monday, this messy affair that has staggered like the proverbial drunk, from Sharma’s home to the Magistrates’ Courts, from midnight hearings in a judge’s chambers to the hallowed halls of the Privy Council, finally collapsed in the drain of the magistracy. And the person who helped take it there, however plausible his explanations may be, was Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls.
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Demeaning our Soca Chutney Cricketers
By Stephen Kangal
March 10, 2007
First let me offer on behalf of all patriotic cricket lovers congratulations to Darren Ganga and his Soca Chutney Cricketers for once again running away with the Carib Regional and KFC One day Championships. The Team presents the PNM Government with another opportunity to allow it to compensate and make it up to this team for the shabby treatment that meted it to them for an outstanding similar achievement in 2006. Government awarded the pittance of $1million to sixteen cricketers and technical officials while doling out over $35m alone in prize money to the Soca Warriors losers.
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State drops charges against CJ Sharma
In a stunning development just after 1pm, the prosecution has dropped charges against Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma, who was charged with attempting to pervert the course of public justice.
As Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls entered the witness box, the lead prosecutor Gilbert Peterson, SC told the court that Sherman McNicolls, the chief witness against Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma, was no longer willing to give evidence in the criminal proceedings against Chief Justice Sharma. The prosecution subsequently discontinued proceedings against the Chief Justice.
Senior Magistrate Lianne Lee Kim then told the Chief Justice that the prosecution was not offering any evidence in this matter and that he is discharged.
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Abortion and Cash-Incentive Sterilisation to Fight Against Crime?
Mungalsingh stands alone
By Mark Lawrence, newsday.co.tt
Thursday, March 1 2007
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.
Senator Mungalsingh stood alone yesterday as two senior UNC members — leader of Opposition business in the Senate and deputy Political Leader Wade Mark and Fyzabad MP Chandresh Sharma — both distanced the party from Mungalsingh’s statements.
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New politics needed in TnT
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
February 28, 2007
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.
This writer is suggesting that the time has come for the inauguration of Public Policy Performance Politics (PPPP) in TnT. In other words, the time is now to move completely away from ethnicity to productivity in the political/electoral arena. The time has come for We, the People, to ask the following question: Are we better off as a result of our constituency’s representation over the past five years?
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Shame and Scandal in CEPEP
By Stephen Kangal
February 24, 2007
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.
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The Valley of Hopelessness
By Stephen Kangal
February 19, 2007
The national community must show its outrage on the post -Cabinet uttering made by Minister Valley on the crime situation and widely reported in the media on Thursday 24 January. After the Manning Administration has led many citizens without any protection into the valley of the shadow of untimely and premature death and rampant crime that also potentially threatens each one of us, Minister Valley repeats the insensitivity of his Prime Minister and proceeds to justify our spiraling crime pandemic as being part of a “global event”. It has nothing to do, according to him, with the total failure of his Government to guarantee our life, liberty, the security of the person and our hard-earned property. For him crime, like inflation, is a feature of the global village of which T&T is a part. It is externally determined.
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Already under a state of siege
By Raffique Shah
February 11, 2007
Prime Minister Patrick Manning must learn to choose his words carefully. He is, after all, the CEO of Trinidad and Tobago, which signals that every word he utters is closely monitored by my colleagues in the media and by the public. He must recall how private statements by US President George Bush resulted in public guffaws when it turned out that mikes close to the “Chief” were switched on, and his ill-informed quips proved to be material-made-for-comics. But one does not expect better from Dubaya who comes across as imbecilic as a failed Junior Secondary school non-graduate: the man expressed shock at the size of Russia! What if he had traversed the expanse of the fallen Soviet Union?
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Manning Ducks our Problems and Runs to Africa
By Stephen Kangal
February 02, 2007
Those of us who stood as helpless and detached spectators agonising at the repressive regime of the late Forbes Burnham of Guyana will recall that whenever the late comrade Prime Minister faced challenges with his domestic policies his political exit strategy entailed embarking upon some African foreign policy and demarche geared to divert Guyanese attention from his failures and lack of credibility at home. That is in keeping with the diversionary theory that when in trouble at home rulers choose to transfer the focus abroad.
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