By Stephen Kangal
August 22, 2022
I am patently unsettled and indeed very surprised that CCNTV 6 saw it fit to feature and to give The Leader of the Opposition of Guyana Mr Aubrey Norton in its Friday last Morning Edition a window to level false and misleading criticisms against The Administration of Guyanese President Dr Irfan Ali for T&T consumption.
Continue reading Keep Adversarial Domestic Politics at Home
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 01, 2022
PART III
On Friday, July 21, 2021, around 1.30 p.m., PM Keith Rowley was preparing for his golf game when a senior golf services coordinator sustained an ankle injury from a golf cart he was driving. Nothing untoward seems to have happened to the woman. An hour later, Rowley confirmed, “While I was playing golf I heard from my lawyer that the woman was taken to the hospital, was checked out and cleared to go… Nobody was ‘run over’.” (Express, October 27, 2021).
Continue reading Keith Rowley’s failed leadership
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 25, 2022
PART I — PART II
The Hatter asks Alice: “Why is a bird like a desk?”
Alice was pleased. She enjoyed playing word games, so she said, “That’s an easy question.”
“Do you mean you know the answer?” said the March Hare.
“Yes,” said Alice.
“Then you must say what you mean,” the March Hare said.
“I do,” Alice said quickly. “Well, I mean what I say. And that’s the same thing, you know.”
“No, it isn’t!” said the Hatter.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
On April 21, 2022, the prime minister commented on the close to 20 murders that took place while he was in Barbados. Asked if T&T was losing its fight against crime, the PM responded: “I don’t notice anybody running away from the fact that we are a violent society and in recent years a number of persons have gotten their hands on firearms, handguns in particular.” (Express, April 22.)
Continue reading Keith Rowley’s Failed Leadership
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 18, 2022
PART I
Why boaseth thyself, oh evil man
Playing smart and not being clever.—“Small Axe” by Bob Marley
As I listened to a recent message that Mother Bernie sent to Keith Rowley, I appreciated anew why Eric Williams paid so much attention to the wisdom of the leaders of the Spiritual Baptist faith. In her tour de force, she informed Rowley of some truths about leadership that laid bare his shortcomings as our political leader.
Continue reading Keith Rowley’s Failed Leadership
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 11, 2022
PART III
It was a hot July day in the late 1990s when I received a call from a young man, full of enthusiasm, who wanted to make a difference in the lives of young people. He wanted me to address the members of an organisation he led. His name was Foster Cummings. I have never forgotten the devotion he applied to what he was doing.
Continue reading The politics of redemption
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 20, 2022
The controversy started when Camille Robinson-Regis called Kamla Persad-Bissessar out of her name. Kamla responded by casting aspersions on Camille’s “slave name”, which played right into a deep cultural fissure that exists within our fragile social structure. Whatever the merits of either argument, as my mother would have said, “Is de answer does bring the row.” Hopefully, in this case, the answers should allow us to see our cultural blindness.
Continue reading What’s in a slave name?
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 13, 2022
Akan people of Ghana, from which my lineage springs, have a naming ceremony eight or ten days after a child is born. It is called the Outdoor Ceremony, where the child is brought into the outdoors to see the light of day.
During that ceremony, the child is given a name that confers a specific identity upon him or her. Not a tear is shed if that child dies before the naming ceremony. It is as if that entity never existed, so precious is a person’s name in that society.
Continue reading Doh mess with ma name
We can’t beat our way out of it
By Jensen La Vende
April 21, 2022 – newsday.co.tt
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT will not be the solution for school violence the Prime Minister said on Thursday as he responded to number of videos of school children fighting.
Speaking with the media at the Piarco International Airport on Thursday, Dr Rowley said a better approach must be used.
“There is no intention to beat our way out of this,” Rowley said when asked if the re-introduction of corporal punishment would be used to curb school violence.
Continue reading Prime Minister on school violence
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 11, 2022
One is always flabbergasted by how democracy functions (or malfunctions) in Trinidad and Tobago. Recently there was a Cabinet reshuffle in the Government. Clarence Rambharat, the Minister of Agriculture, resigned. He expressed his desire to return to Canada to be closer to his family and yet one week later he was named or, as the Express describes it, “rocked back” into power. (Express, April 3.)
Continue reading I am the State!
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 04, 2022
A few weeks ago, Express journalist Ria Taitt asked PNM political leader and Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley whether he would be presenting himself as a candidate for the leadership of the party. He responded: “I was elected in a general election for the term 2020 to 2025. I have a responsibility to complete the mandate that the electorate gave me, but I can only do so by being the PNM leader. My term of office as PNM leader ends this year so there will be an internal election, and to serve out my mandate as Prime Minister I am obligated to seek an extension of my term as political leader of the PNM.”
Continue reading The Political Leader as a Man of Culture