By Raffique Shah
February 14, 2026
I don’t know why the average person who gets drawn into conversation or argument withdraws into the safety net of the age-old boundaries of song and dance, and revelry and scholarly epistles. The educated among us are the first to shelter behind banality as they pretend to know much about art forms that, in truth, they know little of.
Continue reading You cannot legislate culture
By Raffique Shah
February 07, 2026
The first dire warning I issued on this threat to the stability of the nation was so far back that I hardly recall the date and circumstances on which I had spoken.
It was definitely before the 2025 general election. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar had triggered the alarm system in my head which raised serious concerns of something close to a race war about to erupt. Sticking with her violent solutions to the runaway crime problem, not for the first time, she simulated a pistol being fired by her hand, with a mischievous look on her face; she squeezed the trigger a few times, shouting empty the clip.
Continue reading No mess, this is madness
By Raffique Shah
January 24, 2026
For sake of country, more than people, I keep hoping the portents of an economic meltdown that stand menacingly watching at Trinidad and Tobago will attempt for yet another time in its history to stave off the doom and gloom that threaten.
In my time, at my age (I’m approaching 80), I have seen God or whatever deity people worship smile at this cussed country and spare us the hardships, gore and misery that other countries face year after year. In my time, born in 1946 as I was, I have watched Trinis “wine” through hurricane, earthquakes, fire, floods and worse, while our neighbours up the Caribbean Sea, in Latin and North America, are bullied and beaten as they face the wrath of God or whoever else directs the show.
Continue reading Country over the unpatriotic