Daily Archives: April 29, 2024

Africa, General T&T

Please stay home

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 29, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI do not know what Cabinet intended to achieve when it changed “Emancipation Day” to “African Emancipation Day”, beginning August 1, 2024. Our Prime Minister declared that too many people at the international level were attempting to “add appendages” to the reasoning behind emancipation. He felt he had to change that. He declaimed: “We in T&T, who led on this matter, will have none of it. We made it quite clear that emancipation in T&T is a result of the emancipation of slaves,” even though most enlightened scholars refer to people who were stolen from Africa and brought to work on the plantations of the New World as “enslaved” people rather than “slaves”.
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corruption, General T&T

Mandate to lock up

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By Raffique Shah
April 29, 2024

Raffique ShahSo that readers may get an idea of the sheer size of the monster that is corruption, of how easily the high and mighty as well as the poor and powerless are caught in its web, I cite one of the oldest jokes in parliamentary lore.

Lady Astor, the first woman to sit in the British parliament, was once jokingly propositioned by a drunk Winston Churchill when he asked her: will you go to bed with me for 50 pounds? She did not respond curtly; instead she hesitated, but before she could sidestep the trap Churchill was about to spring on her, he asked: will you go to bed with me for eight pounds? To which she angrily responded: what do you think I am? He replied: we already know the answer to that, we are just trying to fix a price.
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