By Andre Bagoo
May 26, 2009 – newsday.co.tt
Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog
WITH NO Integrity Commission in place, complaints made against several Government ministers cannot go forward, officials of the Integrity Commission have advised. Among the matters are complaints brought in relation to: Prime Minister Patrick Manning; Health Minister Jerry Narace; Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Teshiera and Works and Transport Minister Colm Imbert.
And with amendments to the Integrity in Public Life Act still in the Senate, the possibility of some of the complaints having to be done again and under the more stringent conditions outlined in the proposed amendments has been raised.
Continue reading No Integrity Commission, no action on Govt
The recent domino-like collapse of the membership of the Integrity Commission brings to the fore the stark reality of the co-existence of dictatorship politics in the Office of the Prime Minister and the Office of the President of T&T.
If one is to judge from the relatively high prices for food at supermarkets then Trinidad and Tobago must be the only place on the globe that has not been affected, price wise at least, by the international economic downturn which has seen food prices tumbling worldwide, for example, the United States of America, China, India, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and South Africa. Nonetheless, the answer must lie, not in complaining, but in starting a kitchen garden in which fruits and vegetables can be grown on a modest scale, or if you have adequate land space then yams, eddoes, carrots, pigeon peas, corn, bananas, ochroes, green figs and dasheen as well as the seasonal sorrel.
TRINIDADIANS would swear that the world is gripped by “blight”, a toxic mix of negative forces or “spirit lashes” that have us reeling every-which-way. Those who believe in the biblical end-times would counter that God is angry with man, hence the confluence of wars, pestilence, human misery and harsh economic times. Whatever the reasons for the seemingly intractable problems that have engulfed the world, I choose to adopt calypsonian Blakie’s refrain, “Ah never see t’ing so yet!”
Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams has officially confirmed what everyone, except the Cabinet, had long known: the economy is in decline.