By Raffique Shah
January 27, 2016
As a nation, we can do nothing about the plunging price of oil except watch with alarm as crude slides below US $30 a barrel.
Even if we ramp up production, which has fallen by approximately 50 per cent over the past decade, it will make little sense. At this point, it might be better to leave the oil in the wells rather than sell it for peanuts.
Continue reading Destiny in our hands
January 26 2016 – newsday.co.tt
FORMER prime minister and current Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday said the ruling by the Privy Council was a clear vindication of her then government’s decision to repeal the controversial Section 34 of the Administration of Justice (Indictable Offences) Act.
Continue reading Kamla: Section 34 Ruling Vindicates PP
By Jensen La Vende
January 22, 2016 – guardian.co.tt
Slaughter of the innocents. That was how Laventille residents yesterday described the double murder of two schoolboys, who were dragged from a taxi and shot dead while on their way home at Upper Picton Road.
The victims have been identified as Success Laventille Secondary School students Denelson Smith, 17, and Mark Richards, 16, by residents of Upper Picton Road, Laventille.
Continue reading Schoolboys slaughtered
By Rachael Espinet
January 15, 2016 – guardian.co.tt
Opposition Senator Wayne Sturge wants the Integrity Commission to investigate the behaviour of Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi for his alleged involvement in what Sturge deems a questionable loan agreement between HDC and Noel Garcia.
Sturge claims Garcia, who was managing director of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and is currently the chairman of Udecott, was granted a loan from the HDC.
Continue reading Sturge wants AG probed over HDC loan to Garcia
By Raffique Shah
January 11, 2016
“I don’t know who Jit Samaroo was, but listening to others speak, he must have been a great man…my condolences to his family.”
That was a caller from Princes Town to TV6’s Morning Edition’s host Hayden Blades, who devoted much of last Friday’s programme to persons wanting to pay tribute to Jit, who had died the day before.
Continue reading Humility was Jit’s hallmark
No more VAT for 1,300 businesses
By Richard Lord
January 11, 2016 – guardian.co.tt
Finance Minister Colm Imbert reads the price of oil from his cellphone while Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley looks on attentively during the sitting of Parliament yesterday. PHOTO: MARCUS GONZALES
While an estimated 1,300 businesses will no longer have to pay Value Added Tax (VAT) from next month, thousands of citizens will have to dig deeper in their pockets to buy several items, such as rice (except parboiled and boiled), flour (except all purpose and wheat), coffee, orange and grapefruit juices, mauby, tea and tomato ketchup.
Continue reading Citizens to pay more for food
By Richardson Dhalai
January 11, 2016 – newsday.co.tt
THE succesfully lobbied to “Axe the Tax” now Congress of the People political leader Prakash Ramadar is warning that the proposed Property Tax of the current People’s National Movement administration can transform an inheritance to a “debt burden.” Ramadhar was speaking at the COP’s first post-national council press conference for 2016 at the party’s Operations Centre in Charlieville.
Continue reading Prakash warns: Property tax can be a ‘debt burden’
By Stephen Kangal
January 11, 2015
Ministers Shamfa Cudjoe and Robinson-Regis labored to point out that the PNM was in charge, albeit ostensibly of T&T now. But it seems to me that having regard to the sudden, unprecedented ideological shift of the PNM in drifting away irretrievably from its traditional ”small-man” ideological moorings initiated by the late founder in 1956 to being sucked at present into the vortex and held securely in the vice of big business, it has to do the bidding of its capitalist campaign financiers members of the urban Chamber of Commerce and the Bankers Association.
Continue reading Capitalist Financiers in Charge Now
By Raffique Shah
January 04, 2016
In a few months, I shall cross another threshold of aging, scoring seventy years of life and officially transitioning into the status of “old geezer”.
The dawning of a new year set me thinking about the past and the future, although I know I have fewer years ahead of me than behind me. In such circumstance, retrospection becomes the preferred option.
Continue reading Aging in this cussed country
By Stephen Kangal
January 02, 2015
Any PM who claims to be a plain old fashioned leader after delivering a much awaited First Address to the Nation had a duty of care and indeed a political obligation to obtain first hand and as they are articulated, the reaction of the people to his prescription albeit diffused, to the package of adjustment measures that represent his diagnosis of the economic and financial ailment besieging T&T.
Continue reading PM Rowley Should Have Been Here