By Raffique Shah
July 14, 2015
WE must really be a nation of “cunumunus”, one-point-one million fools (if we believe the EBC number of registered voters, which is another story) for an array of politicians, would-be and have-been, to treat us with the contempt they do.
Continue reading The Third Force
By Renuka Singh
July 05, 2015 – guardian.co.tt
A planned walkabout in embattled Enterprise, Chaguanas, by Independent Liberal Party (ILP) leader Jack Warner yesterday upstaged an impromptu walkabout in the same area by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
Warner and his ILP supporters walked right past the Postman Grounds where Persad-Bissessar and several top cops met with the residents to deliver football uniforms to the Crown Trace Football Club. The team has a game in Orlando, Florida, and the cost of flights and uniforms is being offset by the Government.
Continue reading Jack upstages Kamla on Central walkabouts
By Raffique Shah
July 05, 2015
IN the pre-election polls conducted thus far, the issues that are of concern to the electorate are crime, unemployment, corruption, health care and rising prices, mostly in that order.
The state of the economy does not feature at all, although it impacts almost all these concerns.
Understandably, crime is the number one issue. Notwithstanding claims by both the Government and the police that there have been significant decreases in “serious crimes”, clearly, most people live in fear of being victims.
Continue reading Mismanaging the economy
Guardian Editorial
July 05, 2015 – guardian.co.tt
The problem is that members of the public might have been so distracted by the President’s rumshop reference—a terse dismissal of their questions and concerns—that crucial aspects of his statement might have been lost.
President Anthony Carmona’s reference to “rumshop logic” in describing citizens’ comments about the latest fallouts from the Integrity Commission is unfortunate. Not only did it defeat what was an otherwise laudable attempt to bring clarity to an issue that has long been a focus of national concern and debate, it has also reinforced recent negative perceptions of that agency. The President was well within his rights to deal with the matter at length—he was, after all the focus of much of the criticisms following the latest implosion of that august body. Unfortunately, his choice of words and his condescending tone served to alienate rather then enlighten.
Continue reading President Carmona, the IC and the public
By Julien Neaves
July 05, 2015 – newsday.co.tt
TRINIDAD and Tobago has received its lowest ranking ever on an international peace list as the country continues to have maximum scores for homicides and violent crimes, and high scores for perceptions of criminality and access to weapons.
Former National Security Minister Gary Griffith, however, says the ranking should be taken with a “pinch of salt” while a local criminologist says it is not telling citizens anything they do not live as a reality.
Continue reading TT scores low on global peace list
By Raffique Shah
June 27, 2015
It is quite an indictment against most if not all of the adult population of this country that focus of attention in this election campaign thus far has been on scandals aplenty that titillate our perverted taste buds.
We are riveted to Jack Warner’s nocturnal meanderings that have traversed paper trails involving large sums of money allegedly paid to his former friends in the UNC, and crept into the private lives of the Prime Minister and her friends.
Continue reading It’s the economy, clowns
By Stephen Kangal
June 26, 2015
We the voters of Chaguanas West of the elections held in 2010 and 2013 did not vote for the current adversarial “buss the mark” agenda being prosecuted by our MP Jack Warner. He no longer represents our views and aspirations having voted for him overwhelmingly and unprecedentedly in the 2013 bye-election.
Continue reading Chaguanas West Did Not Vote For That Jack!
By Raffique Shah
June 21, 2015
Jack Warner is not a mad man—or delusional, as the Prime Minister euphemistically puts it.
If he was, then the PM, who chose him to act in the highest office in the land on several occasions, and assigned him to the national security portfolio three years ago, must be madder than him.
And members of Cabinet and the People’s Partnership hierarchy who clung to him as if he were a latter-day Jesus or Rama or Muhammad, are the maddest people ever to have governed a country.
Continue reading Jack’s revenge
By Nalinee Seelal
June 17, 2015 – newsday.co.tt
POLICE confirmed yesterday that they found five grammes of a “plant like material resembling marijua-na” at the Prime Minister’s private residence, prompting Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams to order an investigation into the mat-ter.
A report of the find was submitted to Williams at 2 pm yesterday — a day after he said that the police were not in possession of any information on drugs being found at the Prime Minister’s residence. The report, signed by Snr Supt Gould and given to Williams yesterday indicated, that the substance contained in a plastic bag was discovered in the male wash-room of a Gazebo on the western end of the Prime Minister’s residence at Phillipine. The discovery was made by a Special Branch officer on Friday April 19, 2013 at about 8.50 am.
Continue reading FRESH WEED PROBE
By Stephen Kangal
June 17, 2015
Expelled-from-Parliament MP Dr Keith Rowley and leader of the PNM is under political and moral obligation to clear the decks of those incriminating issues still hanging over him like swords of Damocles before he can be admitted into the Leaders Debates chamber to stand up as an equal to the Prime Minister and leader of the UNC. He must issue an apology to the Speaker of the House and to those MP’s whose reputation has been sullied by his deliberate falsehoods and fabrications.
Continue reading Rowley Must Clear the Pre-Debates Decks