By Raffique Shah
July 12, 2025
After researching the Internet extracting information that would lead me to a possible exit from the suffering that poverty imposes on people, I concluded that the way out of poverty is to ignore those who are stricken by its malafides.
Poverty spares not one country. Even the wealthy countries have vagrants. Some of the brightest minds, backed by generous funding for university and other research agencies, have attempted to peer behind the tattered curtains that shroud poverty. Their conclusions and possible solutions are jokes. When calypsonian the Mighty Shadow (Winston Bailey) belted out his thought-provoking theories in song, he achieved nothing. Not the money earned from the sale of the song, mark you.
A lifelong sucker for sad stories and dreamer of making the world the domain of angels and crooks, what ignited my interest in seeking to turn the world into an angelic reserve for all the good people remaining on earth as they may well be in Heaven and on Earth (think Heaven for Christians, Jannah for Muslims)… no I’m not going down that track. Mine is not a dream world. It’s the real thing that has locked me in—as, say, Dante’s Inferno—that would make it easy for people who dwell or think they are dwelling in paradise. I thought of this when I peered beyond the tattered curtain, looking not for virgins, but for the registers that will bear the names of all those in the last PNM government who have booked their one-way trips to prison.
Ever since the last general election on April 28 when the PNM was wrecked out of power, all we keep hearing from the new UNC administration are allegations of impropriety in office, followed by threats of jail. The UNC in government 2010-2015 was supposed to have committed “grand theft” to the tune of billions of dollars. Every post-Cabinet briefing in that era made allegations of virtually cleaning out the public purse before they were ripped out of office in 2015. The population listened well and waited in eager anticipation of images of UNC ex-ministers in chains, carted off to jail. Then PM Dr Keith Rowley, on whom I had bestowed a title of best PM, held on to power, this time for ten years. From beginning to end, he and his cohorts promised the population that the law would take its course, that justice would be meted out. It was not. But under the Manning administration, of which Rowley was a part, several ministers in the Basdeo Panday government, pre-2010, were in fact charged with a range of offences, and some of them ended up in jail, either on remand or having been sentenced.
Look, I know governments are not responsible for prosecuting thieves and bandits from all stations—that is the job of the police and the judiciary. Still, I think people felt cheated when some of the bandits who are believed to have escaped unscathed, are still out there playing mas like calypsonian Penguin’s devil.
They’re back in office now, thanks to a gullible electorate that seems to find nothing wrong with some questionable people being in power (then again, half of the electorate, possibly more, would have passed a bribe or two in their lifetimes). This public cuss-out over the CEPEP programme was always a decent idea that was derailed by the grand masters and mistresses of pillage. This would be a tragedy-turned-comedy, if ever taken to court.
Both PNM and UNC are up to their heads in a flood of corruption that has always haunted CEPEP. Party members see CEPEP contracts as their “birth-rights”, an entitlement because they are party members or financiers. In the most recent general election, contractors openly provided transport for the PNM, while the UNC, out of power, had to turn to their financiers to meet such expenses. Either way, it’s wrong. State resources ought never to be used in an election campaign. Both parties are guilty of this. Large question marks hover over party financing during an election. Many wealthy people parade as contractors when they don’t own a shovel, nor are they competent at what they purport to do.
What bothers me more is that CEPEP has not delivered in making entrepreneurs of ordinary citizens. Instead, people at that income level are paid starvation wages, barely any money to take care of themselves or their families. They face constant threats of job loss by merciless contractors, and many of them are made to run personal errands for “the boss”— all on the taxpayers’ dime. CEPEP workers are the modern-day slaves.
The UNC boasts of being born out of labour, the trade union movement, yet the first thing they did was to fire anybody who smelt of “PNM”. And, if a third or fourth or even fifth party comes along, they will do the same. Plus ça change.