By Raffique Shah
March 14, 2022
I do not know the former chairman of the Energy Chamber, Eugene Tiah. Never seen, met or spoken with him. I know only that he appears to be well respected in the energy industries by his peers, and presumably by the overlords of the downstream and petrochemicals industries, a vast, multi-billion-dollar contributor to the national economy in which the State has significant interest.
Continue reading Good people must speak out now
By Raffique Shah
March 07, 2022
This country is losing large numbers of young people at an alarming rate. No one seems to be intrigued with, or concerned about, their disappearance from their communities and school systems. Yet we hear and see thousands of undocumented citizens make cameo appearances at venues in the forests that are never far from us, and then they simply vanish again, mostly to reappear when next some government agency is distributing food, clothing, grants, etc—and then they’re gone.
I have heard some public officers allude to this bizarre phenomenon that seems completely out of character with the simplicity of our living styles (distinct from our lifestyles), but nothing further is ever heard about them… unless or until something bizarre occurs.
Continue reading We know why we are in this mess
By Raffique Shah
February 28, 2022
I told everybody who asked my opinion on the likelihood of war, of Vladimir Putin’s massive military force positioned close to Russia’s boundaries with Ukraine storming into the latter’s territory in a bid to re-draw the maps for that part of the world, that was unlikely.
Speaking more from my heart than my head, I suppose, I posited that “nobody wants a war”—not now, not ever. Wars are costly, bloody affairs that wipe out of existence entire generations of mostly young people.
Continue reading Putin—casualty of his own war
By Raffique Shah
February 21, 2022
I am convinced that Trinidad and Tobago is the most corrupt country in the world. There is hardly a person who has not witnessed “wid mih own eyes”, as Trinis would say, or otherwise gained knowledge of, at least one act of corruption in his lifetime, and likelier several such illegal transactions. He or she will have said nothing about it by way of reporting the illegal act to anyone with the authority to act on it.
Continue reading Corruption capital
By Raffique Shah
February 14, 2022
My final focus on food production for now, on cutting back on imports which stand at approximately US$1 billion per year, adds nothing new, nothing that I, and others more qualified than I, have not said before.
In fact, there is hardly anything I can add to this component of the economy since the challenges remain the same they were decades ago, and governments’ responses, likewise, are like a stuck wax record in a digital player—jarring, unintelligible noises that are offensive to the trained ear.
Continue reading Eat smart, beat inflation
By Raffique Shah
February 07, 2022
Eternal optimist that I am, I see opportunities in crisis—and believe me when I tell you I’ve seen crises in my life that most men cannot even imagine. Many do not wish to even go that far, fearing that nightmarish images would materialise into reality and they would remain trapped in a Dante-like inferno forever and ever… don’t ever mention the “amen”. That could render a grim present into an ominous future.
Continue reading ‘Foods’ that kill us not so softly
By Raffique Shah
January 31, 2022
If there was anything shocking about the non-appointment of a new Commissioner of Police, the simultaneous publication of the retired Justice Stanley John’s report and the stench that emanated from the innards of the records room when its files were opened, it was the surprise expressed by citizens over the scandalous state of affairs in the Police Service.
Continue reading FULs no solution to crime problem
By Raffique Shah
January 24, 2022
It didn’t take Nobel Prize-winning economists such as St Lucia’s Sir Arthur Lewis, or the USA’s Milton Friedman or Paul Krugman, to project that as the world economy emerged from an unprecedented virtual lockdown that lasted three, four, who knows how many years during the Covid pandemic, commodity prices, especially those of goods and services that are critical to the recovery of countries across the world, would rise rapidly, putting them beyond the reach of the poorest nations and the poor in every nation.
Continue reading Talk to me about patriotism
By Raffique Shah
January 17, 2022
I am writing this column on Saturday morning, so I have no idea what the PM would have announced at his media briefing in the afternoon.
But with the drums of political war growing ominously louder by the day, and increasing in volume and tempo, and those who are looking to unseat his Government long before the due date for fresh elections, buoyed as they are by Watson Duke’s sound licking on the PNM in the recent Tobago House of Assembly election, they are doing everything to frustrate him, to goad the PM into calling snap elections, which they believe they can win, whoever “they” may be, whatever their agendas.
Continue reading Army of the vaccinated
By Raffique Shah
January 10, 2022
Not even George Orwell, who wrote the right-wing classic Animal Farm which summarised workers in power, post-revolution, in the worst possible light, could have scripted the post-Covid tragi-comedy that premiered a few weeks ago, when the Delta variant of the virus first showed what it could do, and now Omicron is breaking box office records, leaving mankind stupefied.
Continue reading Bring back the ‘Bull’