Tag Archives: T&T Govt

Crime in T&T, General T&T, PNM, Police, Politics, Protest

Beetham: man vs corbeaux

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By Raffique Shah
July 11, 2022

Raffique ShahMany moons ago, when I was young, idealistic and very much a utopian dreamer, I had a vision for a new Beetham community. It will have formed in the early 1960s when I first travelled to Port of Spain frequently.

The route the taxis used from Chaguanas was the relatively new Princess Margaret Highway (commissioned in 1954, I think), turning west onto the Churchill-Roosevelt (built by the US armed forces in 1941 to service the largest air force base in this part of the world, Fort Read in Wallerfield, and used exclusively by military vehicles until it was handed over to the local authorities in 1949). The CRH ended at Barataria. From that point, before the Beetham Highway was opened in ’56, all traffic to PoS had to return to the Eastern Main Road to access PoS.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, Violence

Power of the gun

By Raffique Shah
July 04, 2022

Raffique ShahWe are not the most crime-ridden country in the world, notwithstanding claims to that effect by organisations and individuals that manipulate raw data from dubious sources so that they can support whatever theory or argument their authors wish to pursue.

For example, there are academics and criminologists who rely on official police numbers that could be quite misleading. To support my argument, I ask: can the police or other government agency in many densely-populated, slum-infested countries and cities (think India, Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines…) accurately account for every living or dead soul in such human-jungles? Hell, in the comparatively minuscule Beetham Estate or Sea Lots in Trinidad and Tobago, people live and die and never appear on records, so wheel and come back if you expect me to buy “official” data as being accurate.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Schools

SEA Results Must be Published

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By Stephen Kangal
July 03, 2022

Stephen KangalPrimary students write an annual competitive SEA Examination that determines, inter alia, where the students are to receive their best secondary schooling of choice to foster their academic development and their career paths.

These results have been published since its inception.

First the PNM interfered with the CAPE scholarships criteria by cutting down the number and even tinkering with the allocation based on subjectivity.
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General T&T, Politics, Schools

The politics of redemption

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 27, 2022

Old pirates, yes, they rob I / Sold I to the merchant ships/ Minutes after they took I / From the bottomless pit / But my hand was made strong /By the hand of the Almighty / We forward in this generation / Triumphantly.

—Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”

PART I

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn the 1970s I had the privilege of teaching the late Fr Henry Charles at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He was one of the most brilliant students I have ever taught. In fact, he was more brilliant than I in certain respects. I taught a course on West Indian literature, and he seemed to know everything about the writers we were discussing. I deferred to him on many occasions when difficult questions came up in class.
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General T&T, Health, Labour, Trade Unions

Benefits, not increases

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By Raffique Shah
June 20, 2022

Raffique ShahIt’s not so much that in a complex new world forged and driven by technology that comprises lightening-speed communications and incredible capacities for generating, processing, storing and distributing information that trade unions have been blindsided by microchips that could signal their demise.

Indeed, as my comrades make their way to Fyzabad today for the march and rally, they should feel proud to be part of an organisation that, during its 85-year history in Trinidad and Tobago, has, pound-for-pound, contributed more than any other toward the upliftment of the society. For people who have never participated in or attended the annual event, shame on you. I mean no insult when I say that you will brave storms and travel to Wah-he-oh-ho where alcohol and “wining” to sweet soca music are the only items that are on the agenda.
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Agriculture, Food, General T&T

Wheat, soy and disease

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By Raffique Shah
May 30, 2022

Raffique ShahIn my relatively short lifetime on Earth, and the even shorter time I actively focused on food production, campaigned for food security, and was a member of committees, boards, etc, that, at least on paper or intent, held out hope that here, at last, was a government or a group of influential people who recognised that we faced a critical problem, and they were prepared to take action to halt the slide into starvation, reverse the tide of widespread hunger, only to find that no action followed the lofty pronouncements.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, PNM, Politics

If the priest could play…

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 24, 2022

Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility. Even the restraints imposed in the training of men and children are restraints that will in the end make greater freedom possible.

—WEB Du Bois, John Brown

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeWhen we voted for the PNM in 2015, we felt that we were voting to end corruption and to bring to justice those who had stolen from the State. Unfortunately, we were wrong. Seven long years after PNM’s ascendancy to power, no one has been found guilty of any major crime of corruption, but then again, all those allegations may have been a mirage in our collective imagination.
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General T&T, Politics

A leader of destiny

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 09, 2022

PART I

Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe“The greatest supporter of the movement is / A young barrister who has made the workers’ struggle his / I’m referring to Adrian Cola Rienzi / Undoubtedly a leader of destiny / Who is working the workers to agi­tate / To eradicate and co-operate.”

—Attila the Hun, “Trade Unionism”

Last week I concluded my article by highlighting that Independence brought us many challenges. They included fusing the many ethnic groups together, bridging the increasing gap between the rich and poor, and the spectre of corruption in our midst. I hadn’t yet heard Karen Tesheira’s comments on the possibility of the Government’s corruption so I couldn’t comment on it.
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General T&T, Parliament, PNM, Politics

The price of progress – Pt II

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 02, 2022

PART I — PART II

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThe general election of 1946 ushered in a new phase in Trinidad and Tobago’s political development, in that it was the year in which universal suffrage was introduced into the island. In that year, Patrick Solomon formed the West Indian National Party with Dr David Pitt, which later became the Caribbean Socialist Party.

Between 1950 and 1956, Albert Gomes, who considered himself “the logical successor to Captain Cipriani”, formed the Party of Political Progress Groups to contest the 1956 election. Owen Mathurin argues, “Gomes’s outstanding ambition was to outdo Cipriani and replace him as the hero in the hearts of the black working class.” Although the Colonial Office saw Gomes as their “blue-eyed boy”, he was not regarded as the champion of the working class, as he had seen himself.
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General T&T, Politics, Schools

Bad teachers, bad parents

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By Raffique Shah
May 02, 2022

Raffique ShahGood news is hard to come by nowadays. So young journalists, spawned on a diet of blood, gore, corruption, crime, suffering and worse, have become nihilists without knowing what the word means. And readers of conventional newspapers and electronic media audiences, especially the misnamed “social media”, will not recognise a decent story if it hits them between the eyes, so immersed are they in the lies, half-truths and raw sewage that pass for information on the 5G superhighway that rules our lives, imprisons our minds with such stealth, we degenerate into clones, drones and assorted mindless, brainless creatures to the extent that when we look into the mirror, we see nothing, because there is nothing to see.
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