Tag Archives: Raffique Shah

Elections, General T&T

Our ‘lumpen intelligentsia’

By Raffique Shah
August 28, 2023

Raffique ShahIf Karl Marx were alive and still fighting to establish his elusive dream of a pure communist country, he might have been amused by a 21st-century phenomenon that he would have uproariously branded “the lumpen intelligentsia”. Of course, just about everyone so branded, and most who are not, will be equally lost. You see, the vocabulary nowadays has excised such words and terms as if their mere mention would leave a stain on them.

If you or I walked up to one-time die-hard communists such as Wade Mark, who was among a small band of Marxists who fought elections in 1981 but won hardly any votes, they’d likely tell you, “No, boy, ah doh do dat again.” So it’s left to a handful of us revolutionaries to at least keep the memories of another day alive, if not kicking.
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General T&T, Health

Love That Endures

By Raffique Shah
August 15, 2023

Raffique ShahA wave of emotions almost overwhelmed me. Yesterday Saturday she will have marked her seventy-sixth year on Earth. There are signs of aging, of course, but not too many that they will have diminished her beauty. Age has also come with some of the infirmities that accompany it, but none as crippling as Parkinson’s Disease that has lodged itself in me. Not that she needs reassuring, but I often profess my love to her. We smile at and with each other. Being my wife, she has been through what few women, especially the wives of public figures, endure.
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General T&T, Race and Identity

Emancipation: much more than pretty garb

By Raffique Shah
August 07, 2023

Raffique ShahIn order for someone to enslave another human being, that unconscionable sub-human must possess sinister ways, lack empathy, and compassion. In my view a human being cannot enslave another human being because all of the above are part of humanity, most of which must be missing for the enslaver to put another human being in chains—not necessarily physically but mentally, such that it compels the slave to serve the master.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

LGE: Political Veterans Last Hurrah

By Raffique Shah
July 31, 2023

Raffique ShahThe two main political parties in Trinidad and Tobago are taking the local government election, scheduled for two weeks tomorrow, very seriously. I expected the opposition United National Congress to maintain its momentum, which it has kept at a steady pace since it lost the 2015 general election, to keep the tempo going since it gained a few seats and the popular votes for its unrelenting pressure on the ruling People’s National Movement.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T

Messrs Big grow bigger

By Raffique Shah
July 24, 2023

Raffique ShahIf, over the past 50 years, we, meaning citizens, police and other law enforcement agencies were to have captured, charged, tried and convicted one Mr Big for every hundred named, Trini­dad and Tobago today will have been a crime-free society.

I make this bold statement not to look or sound funny, but to illustrate how stupid it is for law officers and politicians, ­especially senior officials—what they do to impress their bosses and the masses. Every so often when there is nothing positive to report, we hear utterances about “Mr Big”.
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General T&T, Racism Watch

Splitting Hairs

By Raffique Shah
July 10, 2023

Raffique ShahIt did not surprise me when last week senior officials at the Ministry of Education, in teachers’ and parents’ organisations, as well as the best entertainers we have learnt to accept because they are plentiful, colorful and cheap-man on the street—were chiming away on an issue I had no idea existed, far less worthy of comment. But the controversy that erupted when Trinity College at Moka Invoked their rule on specific hairstyles students, graduating students especially, were not allowed to sport at the graduation ceremony, was the proverbial— storm in a calabash. Lawyers, other professionals, anyone connected with education or, inevitably, politics blew the issue wholly out of proportion.
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Gender, General T&T, Sex

Your Gender, Your Business

By Raffique Shah
July 04, 2023

Raffique ShahVerily I say unto you, Man, that you have the right to use, abuse or misuse your body any which way you choose to, so long as you do not impose your choices on your neighbours, friends, and especially on your enemies, since they are likelier to be hostile, even war-like punishment for one’s refusal to submit to the will of the others’ which must be wrong in any culture, belief or ethnicity; further, I retain my right to practice within the privacy of my castle, however humble such edifice may be, acts between me and my mate that bring us immense pleasure, that do not impinge on the freedoms of others, least of all on children who do not have the maturity to rationally determine what is good for them, and what is not.
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Elections, General T&T

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

1 Comment

By Raffique Shah
June 26, 2023

Raffique ShahI am convinced that the problem with politics and governance in this country, the fact that we never seem to get it right, that having wavered between PNM in control for thirty consecutive years to the party losing in 1986 33-3 then complaining about every government having freely elected them, maybe we need to look at ourselves, not the politicians.
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corruption, Crime in T&T, General T&T

Cradle of corruption

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By Raffique Shah
June 20, 2023

Raffique ShahI haven’t given much thought to the local government election due to be held in August, nor have I paid much attention to the ongoing debate on reforming local government, a cornerstone of PNM’s vision for new governments.

In the first instance, besides creating three new boroughs, the Government is seeking to instil the decentralisation of governance, the precise details of which I have not studied. However, I am aware that the contentious issue of property tax which the PNM sees as not only a source of revenue, but more importantly a source of power to the local government bodies, remains a gap between the Government and the Opposition UNC, which is totally against property tax.
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Finance, General T&T

Shame on you, FCB!

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By Raffique Shah
June 11, 2023

Raffique ShahI never thought the day would come when I would find it necessary to write a column like this—coming down like the proverbial tonne of bricks on a financial institution that thousands of patriots like me breathed life into well before it was born, and certainly before the people who currently occupy its management chairs were even ideas, far less born.

But after my experiences over the past few weeks, and listening to other customers complain, I felt compelled to raise the issues in the public forum.
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