By Raffique Shah
March 04, 2007
With cricket World Cup fever gripping the Caribbean as of this weekend, maybe-just maybe-we’d get a respite from the politicians and the criminals, if only for a month or so. But you never can tell what these dubious breeds would come up with to steal our attention away from the galaxy of cricketing stars in our presence and the excitement of matches to come. It takes one mindless act by some gun-toting or cutlass-wielding jackass to cast the entire region in a bad light on the global stage. Or worse, some stupid statement by a publicity craving politician to stir up a storm, abusing his or her rank to paint a horrible picture of the country.
Continue reading Let us be gracious hosts
OPPOSITION United National Congress (UNC) Senator Harry Mungalsingh stoutly defended statements he made to the Upper House on Tuesday that abortion and cash-incentive sterilisation could be measures used in the fight against crime.
Now that election air politics is ubiquitous’ it seems apropos to postulate that there is need for a new genre of politics in TnT. The fact of the matter is that the time has come for the emergence of maturity in the country’s political ethos.
After disbursing a feeding frenzy/political patronage to the tune of $1.6 billion in CEPEP, the PNM Administration has nothing to show except some painted stones from which even the cheap paint has been washed away. The UNC Administration after spending an identical $1.6 billion has an airport to show, large deposits secretly stashed away in foreign bank accounts and supporters facing the courts for alleged theft.
It’s the columnist’s perennial dilemma: what topic to address on a Carnival Sunday? Who reads newspapers around this time anyway? Pan “peongs” in their thousands will be bleary-eyed and either celebrating the sound of steel or fuming over the judges’ decisions from last night’s Panorama finals. Many more who will have attended Friday night’s cacophony, “Soca Monarch”, rendered tone-deaf by noise boxes supreme, are too dazed to do anything but seek out more noise. And the few who have remained sober until now will be psychologically adjusting their systems for the stupor that will start by nightfall.
Within recent times Chairman of the United National Congress, Basdeo Panday, has not only blamed Prime Minister Patrick Manning for “racial tension entrenching itself in T&T” but Congress of the People Leader, Winston Dookeran, has also accused Manning of “provoking racial tensions” and erecting electoral “vote banks”.
Prime Minister Patrick Manning must learn to choose his words carefully. He is, after all, the CEO of Trinidad and Tobago, which signals that every word he utters is closely monitored by my colleagues in the media and by the public. He must recall how private statements by US President George Bush resulted in public guffaws when it turned out that mikes close to the “Chief” were switched on, and his ill-informed quips proved to be material-made-for-comics. But one does not expect better from Dubaya who comes across as imbecilic as a failed Junior Secondary school non-graduate: the man expressed shock at the size of Russia! What if he had traversed the expanse of the fallen Soviet Union?