General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Permanent poverty

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By Raffique Shah
July 12, 2025

Raffique ShahAfter researching the Internet extracting information that would lead me to a possible exit from the suffering that poverty imposes on people, I concluded that the way out of poverty is to ignore those who are stricken by its malafides.

Poverty spares not one country. Even the wealthy countries have vagrants. Some of the brightest minds, backed by generous funding for university and other research agencies, have attempted to peer behind the tattered curtains that shroud poverty. Their conclusions and possible solutions are jokes. When calypsonian the Mighty Shadow (Winston Bailey) belted out his thought-provoking theories in song, he achieved nothing. Not the money earned from the sale of the song, mark you.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Crocodile tears

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 05, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThe tears flowed copiously. A United National Congress Government had broken its key promise, “When UNC wins everybody wins”; some people, it seems, have lost. In the seven weeks of its administration the Government suspended CEPEP contractors, and by extension 10,000 workers who made $120 a day or $28,000 working 48 weeks a year.
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General T&T

A little manners won’t hurt

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By Raffique Shah
July 05, 2025

Raffique ShahI am intrigued by Trade Minister Kama Maharaj’s plan to focus on tourism as one of the main pillars of the new economy. It seems to me that every government that has taken the reins of office over the past 30 years has had tourism in its sights. There is always a promise to woo tourists to this country but they hardly materialise in any significant manner.

I say this not to be critical of tourism as a contributor to the economy of our country. However, there are few countries that have benefited in any significant manner such that they could rely on tourism for improving their foreign exchange earnings and providing jobs that we normally associate with economic growth and social benefits.
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General T&T, USA

Demonising Mamdani

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 28, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI arrived in New York on Thursday. The cooling breeze was welcomed. It was not as hot as Tuesday when New York City’s JFK airport reached 102 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest temperature recorded since 2013, while Central Park “broke a record set all the way back in 1888”. (June 23, New York Daily News.)

However, the weather on Tuesday did not prepare New Yorkers for the political tsunami that disrupted the city that day. Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a Muslim of Uganda heritage, defeated Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York State and a scion of a prominent New York political family, in the Democratic primary for mayor.
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General T&T

An uncertain future

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By Raffique Shah
June 28, 2025

Raffique ShahMany years ago, when I was in my 20s, issues like the state of our national economy didn’t just stimulate my curiosity, but provoked my interest in my country’s future. Then, “UWI Men” such as Lloyd Best, Dr James Millette, and a fella who went by the fancy name “John La Guerre” were interviewed at budget time and invariably pronounced ominously on our future. Anytime those fellas intervened in anything to do with the national economy, they would find doom and gloom.
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General T&T

An indisciplined nation

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 21, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn his Youth Rally address on August 30, 1962, one day before Independence Day, Eric Williams declared: “I have given to the nation as its watchwords, Discipline, Production, Tolerance.”

These words were delivered to the youths but they applied equally to every citizen of the nation. It would have been better if citizens had devised their own watchwords.
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General T&T, Passed on

The fourth mutineer

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By Raffique Shah
June 21, 2025

Raffique ShahSimon and Garfunkel sang: Old Friends, Sat on their park bench like bookends; Winter companions, the old men, Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset; Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly. How terribly strange to be seventy; Old Friends.

I lost an old friend last week. A comrade in arms. An old soldier with a philosophical soul. One whom I could spend hours chatting with on the phone and never get tired because there was always something to talk about. David Brizan, whom I fondly called Obi, passed on after ailing for some time.
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Culture, Education

Black excellence personified

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 14, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThis evening Lewis Gordon, a world-renowned scholar on Frantz Fanon and a major international philosopher, will deliver a lecture, “Frantz Fanon and the Caribbean”, the inaugural event of the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series. It will be held at the UTT Theatre1, NAPA, at 5 p.m. This lecture will be carried online. No one should miss it.
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General T&T, UNC

Kamla’s place in T&T’s political landscape

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 07, 2025

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeLast week’s column, “Kamla’s second coming: a blessing”, elicited the following response from my dear friend Oscar D (not his real name): “Dear Pandit Cudjoe: This article has only elicited ambivalence. Your continued provocation by calling Kamla the mother of the nation is superfluous and disrespectful at best. I agree that we must learn about each other’s culture, but is it that Kamla’s ‘progression’ cannot be analysed within any other religious context? [Perhaps in] the context of African religious thought and philosophy?”
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General T&T, UNC, Venezuela

PM playing with fire

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By Raffique Shah
June 07, 2025

Raffique ShahI hope and expect those in authority who have the powers, to act, if the need arises, to remove a sitting prime minister and government by whatever means it takes to save our country from what appears to be a spark of madness which is threatening to engulf us even as I write (Friday night). Because after I listened to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar a few nights ago, when I heard what she said, I scrutinised her image on television to see if I could discern any signs of insanity or dementia. I leave that for the experts to work on.
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