Category Archives: Politics

Creating Community

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 27, 2007

Young PeopleWhen I grew up in Tacarigua in the nineteen forties and fifties my mother made sure I attended Tacarigua E.C. School while my grandparents immersed themselves in their Yoruba religion. Each year, we celebrated the Christian holidays (Christmas, Easter, etc.,) but on those glorious nights of October when the Shango drums rang out through the village we all went to Mother Gerald’s Shango tent. Cousin Lily’s thanksgivings; Tantie Lenora’s devotion to the Shouter Baptists; and the respect we paid to our ancestors on All Saints Night were parts of that corpus of ritual belief that gave village life a sense of purpose and wholeness.
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URP and Crime

Newsday Editorial
Thursday, March 27 2008

URPAt long last, the Government through National Security Minister Martin Joseph had admitted to a link between the high murder rate and the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP). The question is, what is going to be done about it?

It has taken the PNM administration a long time to reach even this partial admission. Indeed, at the start of the year, even as he acknowledged that the Government’s crime-fighting initiatives had failed, Mr Joseph denied the link between murder and URP — and mere days later denied that he had even said that the Government had failed. And it was only a few weeks ago that, after High Court judge Anthony Carmona spoke publicly about the URP link to crime, Mr Joseph declared stoutly that he had “no evidence of that”. Now, at a press briefing last Tuesday, he says that such a link is “very possible.”
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No ‘Dutch Disease’ for Norway

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, March 23rd 2008

Trini PeopleTHERE’S never a dull moment in Trinidad and Tobago. The Government ensures that every week new, controversial issues erupt to spark debate, cussing, outrage. If not allegations of corruption, there’s always the arrogance of ministers who believe they are anointed by God, not elected by people. If government pauses for a moment, the gangsters and murderers and bandits fill the vacuum with mayhem and massacre to let us know the masses are Good Friday ‘bobolees’. And if both stay aloof, then rest assured politicians out of office would fill the breach with manure that could suffocate us all.
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Leaders must take responsibility

Guardian Editorial
Saturday 22nd March, 2008
guardian.co.tt

Young PeopleThe President of the Republic, His Excellency George Maxwell Richards, and the head of Government, Prime Minister Patrick Manning, have, in their different ways, raised serious concerns about the current state of Trinidad and Tobago. In the instance of the Head of State, President Richards has warned about the challenge of staying on track amongst the recognised and viable states of the international community and not becoming a “failed state.”
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Public Outrage Did Not Break Jet Deal

by Heru
March 20, 2008

Manning's TT$400 Million Jet Dream CrashesThe spokesmen for the government on the Bombardier jet deal have been trying to convince us that the deal was aborted because of government’s insistence on a strict anti-corruption clause, and not because of widespread public outrage.

Guess what? I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt on this. It certainly shows them in a worse light. Instead of being guided by the concerns of the population, they have stubbornly taken the position that they are not.
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Manning’s TT$400 Million Jet Dream Crashes

Patrick Manning's TT$400 Million Jet Dream Crashes

A ploy that did not fly

March 19th 2008
trinidadexpress.com

Caribbean Airlines (CAL) will want the citizenry to believe that its decision to stall the plan to acquire an executive jet was based on the high principle of being determined not to go ahead with the transaction unless the contract included a watertight or, perhaps, more accurately in the context, an airtight anti-corruption clause.
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Inauguration of TT’s President

Public scarce on President’s big day
Judging from the crowd that turned out to President George Maxwell Richards’s inauguration ceremony at the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Mucurapo yesterday, it was clear that the people of this country prefer to party to the max with the President during Carnival, than to see him sworn in for another term of office.
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Manning and the Jet Stuck in Public Outcry

by Heru
March 17, 2008

Manning And The JetPatrick Manning and Caribbean Airlines have been facing widespread public outcry over their attempt to purchase a $400 million luxury jet from Bombardier for the government’s official use. Minister of Works Colm Imbert, Minister of Finance Mariano Browne, and Caribbean Airlines’ chairman Arthur Lok Jack have been the main defenders and spokespeople for the government on this issue.
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Caribbean Airlines ‘gouging’ taxpayers

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, March 16th 2008

Manning And The JetAS I listened to billionaire-businessman Arthur Lok Jack reel out the numbers surrounding Caribbean Airlines (CAL) decision to purchase a Bombardier Global Express SRX, I was puzzled. If anyone knows anything about basic “counting”, it should be a billionaire. If anyone knows about price-gouging, it’s invariably the very wealthy. After all, that’s how most among the super-rich become wealthy. At his media conference last week, Lok Jack reeled out some numbers that stunned me.
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The Sheriff of Wall Street

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 12, 2008

Eliot SpitzerIt’s kind of sad. A brilliant governor with an exciting future brought low because he couldn’t keep his penis in his pants. From all reports, he seemed to be happily married with an adorning wife and three devoted children. Yet, he could not resist the lure of high-class prostitutes on his occasional visits to Washington, D.C.

He needed the exhilaration that comes from living on the edge; the excitement that transgressive behavior generates. Here is a man who knew the dangers of getting involved in a prostitution ring trying to hide the payments he made and sources from which these payments came. He had prosecuted such rings before. Yet, the unfolding drama called for a playwright of Euripides’s stature (he was a Greek playwright), to capture the tragic nature of Governor Eliot Spitzer’s fall from grace.
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