By Raffique Shah
October 04, 2025
As a columnist who has written a weekly piece in one or more popular newspapers for at least 45 years, I know that I’ve reached my limit when the person who is helping me type the 800 words I am allowed is my daughter: she was in diapers back in 1981 and I used to occasionally shout at her when I tried to concentrate or focus, and now I am in diapers—more out of caution than need.
But knowing that, I have arrived at the point in my life when I can no longer say “that column is mine”, my views and only mine.
Yesterday she was hustling to deliver on time to my editor, who is in a younger age bracket as well. Age stares me fixedly in my face as if saying to me, “You old fart.” Oh, I still get on a roll, and off the top of my head I dictate at a dizzying pace, and she is unable to keep up with me as she is no typist.
If my love for writing remains aflame, I’ll try to explain the difficulty I encounter in selecting a topic I wish to address.
Somebody may meet me in the course of the week and raise a topic of concern to citizens, and ask if I might want to address it in my well-read column.
I bask a bit in the flattery, don my thinking cap (a cover to hide the two buss-heads I suffered recently after having fallen and hit my head on the concrete—this is a Parkinson’s patient’s primary fear), and get to work.
Invariably, I’d realise I’d covered that topic multiple times, to varying degrees, over the last few decades.
Since I deal mainly with politics and governance, my range of topics tends to be limited inside those boundaries, which shows how a media commentator can establish his own limits without attempting to do so.
Oh, I do have other pursuits that I enjoy, and which I feel competent to comment on. I wandered panyard to panyard, checking on Andre Tanker’s soulful music; listened in awe to Mungal Patasar’s skilful playing of the sitar; and have stopped at sporting facilities in any part of Trinidad to watch young athletes strive for excellence in their respective disciplines.
For example, today I might have chosen to launch a broadside on Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar over her slide into hemispheric political jockeying in this war of provocation that US President Donald Trump has opened. I believe, though, I have dealt adequately with that topic, and its danger to the geopolitics of the region. Others more qualified than I am have commented on the issue, so why should I revisit?
The masses appear to be unbothered by their PM’s bold risk-taking, where the sovereignty and safety of our country is concerned. It seems that never having had a war in the Caribbean for…almost ever, they are now chomping at the bit for one: oh, what fools! As if it’s not bad enough to be reeling from economic malfunction of all types.
The weather is not being kind to us, especially pertaining to the extreme heat we have endured, which will negatively impact our agricultural production. We are struggling to get yet another agro initiative off the ground, as many other Caribbean countries also have vested interests in doing.
Persad-Bissessar and this country do not need the likes of Trump, who does not give a damn about anywhere else in the world except his own country. He plays with his toys while sitting in a control room. He dictates what the game is, and how many people he expects to kill.
Thus far, mercifully, the numbers killed in our region have not crossed double digits. That could change in a flash. For example, he takes aim at a few people travelling on a ferry, two of whom are narco-traffickers—his words. The operation goes awry and scores, if not hundreds, of South Americans—not confined to just Venezuelans—lose their lives. This is a real possibility.
How would you feel if you are from Brazil, Ecuador or any of the Guianas and this happens to you? I don’t know what Trinis would do. But I know the Latin Americans are never afraid of a fight, and they will defend to the death the people and their sovereign state.
The war they have been clamouring for—if and when it comes, I hope our leaders are prepared to lead from the front; and when the devastation occurs (one only has to look at America’s aftermath in Iraq or Afghanistan), be more than just financially prepared to pick up the pieces.
Do you understand now why I welcome retirement? They want to kill me anyway.