Tag Archives: Raffique Shah

General T&T, Oil and Gas, PNM, Politics

Four trains too far?

By Raffique Shah
May 29, 2019

Raffique ShahConsider the following: in 2019, when the 20-year contract for Train 1 of the Atlantic LNG plant expired and a new contract was negotiated, supposedly giving the people of Trinidad and Tobago a fairer share of the profits, the principal shareholder of the Train, BPTT, cast doubt over its future viability based on an unreliable supply of natural gas occasioned by two (or four?) “dry holes” in the energy giant’s infill drilling programme offshore T&T.
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General T&T, Politics, Recession

No to devaluation

By Raffique Shah
April 15, 2019

Raffique ShahThe continuous cacophony over the state of the national economy is confusing me, as I imagine it confounding the vast majority of the population, including many of those who promote themselves, or who are presented by the media as experts to pontificate on the topic.

If I confused readers with my opening paragraph, rest assured that was not deliberate. It’s just that every Monday morning some Government minister announces that the ailing economy, having been rescued from the intensive care unit from near-death inflicted by his predecessors, suffering foreign-currency-asphyxia, is now stable-to-robust enough to have gone on a training run in preparation for the Miracle Economies Olympiad.
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General T&T, PNM, UNC, WASA

WASA’s crime against communities

5 Comments

By Raffique Shah
May 08, 2019

Raffique ShahIf we agree with the adage a picture tells a thousand words, then by extrapolation, given the immense advances in information technology, a website, especially one belonging to a public utility like the Water and Sewerage Authority, ought to have billions of megabytes of data that are readily available to the public at the click of a computer mouse.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, PNM, Police

Wage war against criminals, not the media

11 Comments

By Raffique Shah
April 30, 2019

Raffique ShahGary Griffith’s unilateral declaration of a “cold war” on the conventional media in general, and the CCN Group in particular, was as predictable as it was inevitable. As a garrulous ex-military officer whose larger-than-life public image was literally forged by and in the mass media, he failed to understand that unlike publicists who are paid to promote a product or personality, successful media houses thrive on their fierce independence in disseminating news and views.
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General T&T, Hinduism, Politics, Racism Watch, Religion

Stoking the fires of racial discord

8 Comments

By Raffique Shah
April 23, 2019

Raffique ShahAs I watched the mayhem unfold across Sri Lanka last Sunday, the death toll from multiple bombings at churches and hotels mounting from the initial count of 160 as some of the severely injured succumbed to their injuries, I thought of how fortunate we in Trinidad and Tobago have been thus far. More than that, I wondered if the purveyors of divisiveness, those who routinely stoke the fires of racial, religious and political discord in this otherwise harmonious society, realise the dangers to which they expose us all.
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General T&T, Politics

No to devaluation

3 Comments

By Raffique Shah
April 20, 2019

Raffique ShahThe continuous cacophony over the state of the national economy is confusing me, as I imagine it confounding the vast majority of the population, including many of those who promote themselves, or who are presented by the media. as experts to pontificate on the topic.

If I confused readers with my opening paragraph, rest assured that was not deliberate. It’s just that every Monday morning some Government minister announces that the ailing economy, having been rescued from the intensive care unit from near-death inflicted by his predecessors, suffering foreign-currency-asphyxia, is now stable-to-robust enough to have gone on a training run in preparation for the Miracle Economies Olympiad.
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Education, General T&T, Schools

Presentation Chaguanas at 60

2 Comments

By Raffique Shah
April 12, 2019

Raffique ShahWhen the pupils and staff of Presentation College, Chaguanas, return to classes in two weeks, their prime focus will be on major examinations at the end of the academic year—promotions exams for those in the junior and intermediate forms, and CSEC and CAPE for those who are transitioning to the upper reaches of secondary level education and those who will enter universities.
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General T&T, Oil and Gas, PNM, Politics

Government must come clean on future of oil industry

1 Comment

By Raffique Shah
April 02, 2019

Raffique ShahThe Keith Rowley Government needs to stop playing the ox with what little is left of the oil industry in Trinidad and Tobago. A few weeks ago, chairman of the successor company to Petrotrin, Wilfred Espinet, inadvertently (according to Energy Minister Franklin Khan) invited “interested parties who possess the requisite energy sector expertise and substantial financial resources” to apply for an initial marketing document regarding the proposed sale of Guaracara Refining Company (GRC) and Paria Fuel Trading Company (PFTC).
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General T&T, International, USA, Venezuela

None so blind…

3 Comments

By Raffique Shah
March 26, 2019

Raffique ShahI find it incomprehensible that supposedly-intelligent persons, many of whom have been around for as long as I have, and who ought to know the bloody history of American interventions in the politics of Latin American countries, routinely regurgitate the propaganda emanating from Washington by referring to Venezuela’s besieged president Nicholas Maduro as an “evil dictator”.

When such description comes from the mouths of the lying US president Donald Trump and his close associates, or from Venezuelans who oppose Maduro (and his predecessor Hugo Chavez), I understand that. They have to paint the man as a monster to rally support and political and economic ostracism that they hope will hasten his demise.
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corruption, General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Beware: nasty election campaigns ahead

3 Comments

By Raffique Shah
March 20, 2019

Raffique ShahIf you thought that Vernella Alleyne-Toppin had plumbed the depth of depravity when, in the run-up to the 2015 general election, the then Tobago East MP launched the most scurrilous, vulgar attack on People’s National Movement leader Dr Keith Rowley, believe me, you haven’t seen the nastiest political campaigning yet.

Alleyne-Toppin had been allowed by House Speaker Wade Mark all the time she needed to allege that Rowley was a biological product of rape, and that he, in turn, would later end up committing the heinous crime to father a son. The alleged victims openly denied Toppin’s baseless charges, which were read into Hansard in the presence of her political leader, then Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and other People’s Partnership parliamentary colleagues, none of whom intervened to stop the nastiness.
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