By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 03, 2025
The United National Congress’ (UNC) overwhelming victory last Monday was nothing short of spectacular. One of my colleagues called it an Eric Williams moment, meaning that Trinibagonians had inaugurated an important turning point in our social and political history: the decimation of an old stultifying order as they ushered in a new social and political era.
Continue reading Magnanimity in victory
By Raffique Shah
May 03, 2025
I would be the happiest person in post-election Trinidad if, three months from now, the new Prime Minister achieves 50% of her goals in any one of her objectives after scoring an emphatic win over the PNM. If, in my gaiety, I make no mention of the occasion that I celebrate and appear to be claiming “victory” as my own, does it matter anyway? When UNC wins, everybody wins, including Raffique. Seriously, though, I should first congratulate Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar on a resounding victory. That was a performance political leaders only dream of—one she will have worked hard at in the ten years she laboured in the vineyards or wherever.
Continue reading Dump the Privy Council
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 26, 2025
When we achieved national independence on August 31, 1962, Dr Eric Williams became the FATHER OF OUR NATION. When Kamla Persad-Bissessar is elected tomorrow she will become the MOTHER OF OUR NATION. It will be a necessary corrective act: after all, we cannot have a father of a nation without having a MOTHER OF OUR NATION.
Continue reading The Mother of Our Nation
By Raffique Shah
April 26, 2025
In the histories of nations such as our Trinidad and Tobago, there are times when challenges that seem insurmountable are thrown in our pathways. In such grim situations when the fabric of a nation is subjected to competing forces, warring tribes or, worse, battling gangs, the outlook is bleak. Negative forces that lay just below the surface crawl out of their caverns in their bid to capitalise on our misfortune. The general election that takes place tomorrow is one such volatile event that threatens a war for the soul of our nation.
Continue reading A fickle electorate
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 19, 2025
Once John Jeremie, Kennedy Swaratsingh and yours truly supported UNC publicly, darkness would seek to prevail over light, stupidity would try to dwarf intelligence, and moral degeneracy would erupt with diabolic fierceness.
I couldn’t conceive the conversation would descend to the vulgarity to which the former Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow took it: “I have five dogs and I’m handy with a shovel, so John Jeremie does not faze me or the PNM.” (Guardian, April 15); Jeremie was “a dog in the PNM. I can call him that” (Express, April 18).
Continue reading Five dogs and a shovel
By Raffique Shah
April 19, 2025
Kamla Persad-Bissessar will be delighted to learn that her not-so-friendly critic, Raffique Shah, has been moving around in my limited spaces, singing loudly, “When UNC wins, everybody wins.” In fact, when I zeroed in on that jingle, I had no idea that was the UNC’s main audio-visual marketing tool. By the time I realised what it was, I turned up my volume because I couldn’t be bothered with what people thought of my singing and the damn thing is catchy.
Continue reading Critical election for everyone
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 12, 2025
By 1959, party politics had taken hold on the people of Trinidad and Tobago. Michael Kangalee (he now calls himself Krishna, his middle name), my schoolmate at Tacarigua EC, supported the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that was led by Bhadase Sagan Maraj. I supported PNM, which was led by Eric Williams. Neither of us could vote but we followed our parents and villagers’ preference in expressing our party allegiances. Undoubtedly, our political position was shaped in part by our racial (not racist) affiliation. Years later, I went to the United States, and Krishna went on to live in Canada via England.
Continue reading Why I will vote UNC
By Raffique Shah
April 12, 2025
In the 45 years I have been writing a weekly column for one newspaper or other, I have never advised my readers which candidate or what party they should vote for. I started with a satirical column, “MP for the Masses”, in 1980, in the run-up to the 1981 general election, the first since 1956 that Dr Eric Williams was not at the helm of the PNM, having died in 1980.
I wrote a combination of humour, addressed the economic fortunes of T&T, took potshots at politicians—by then I had completed my one term as the elected MP for Siparia where, in 1976, I had polled the third highest number of votes—6,601—with only PM George Chambers and Boodram Jattan polling more votes.
Continue reading For whom you stain the finger
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 05, 2025
When serving as prime minister, Patrick Manning rendered two insightful judgments on the former Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow. He said: “When he cannot have his way, Mr Speaker, his method is to bully you…We do not tolerate bullying in the secondary school system…The minute you oppose my good friend, he gets very, very angry. And if you oppose him strongly, he becomes a raging bull.”
Continue reading Young’s leadership, trauma, and the politics of bullying
By Raffique Shah
April 05, 2025
Discomfiture was writ large on the face of Prime Minister Stuart Young, SC, as he engaged in what many a Trinidadian would term “gimmickry”, serving the people their wants and not necessarily their needs.
At a public meeting in San Fernando he felt compelled to respond to the UNC’s bulging bag of election promises to the electorate. The UNC leadership knows well that the cost of implementing a slew of tax-breaks, increased salaries and services to the people and the host of other “goodies” they appear to be drawing from a magician’s hat, will be prohibitive. They are not practical, given the fall in revenues from our main goods and services. But, audiences at their meetings react to their offers like children at a party when the piñata bursts.
Continue reading Gimmicks vs governance