By Raffique Shah
September 11, 2010
LET us be realistic about this burning issue of the minimum wage: no employer who is worthy of being called an entrepreneur pays anyone in his establishment $9 an hour. Put another way, no worker worth his or her sweat, however desperate she may be, would work for eight hours to take home $72. He would be better off hustling on the sidewalk, picking pockets, or robbing others of their valuables.
Continue reading Minimum Wage, Maximum Farce
By Martin Daly
September 04, 2010
Before my August break, I gave glimpses of my growing impatience with the new Government (and I am not referring to it as “new” after today). It is now more than three months since it took office. It is time to assume the demeanour of a Government. The time for settling in is up.
Continue reading Time is up, Partnership
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 18, 2010
When Kamla Persad Bissessar took her oath of office she swore on the Bhagavad Gita, one of the holiest scripts of the Hindus. As a Yoruba man, I am not as acquainted with the Gita as I should but true to my bifurcated beginning I was taught something about the Holy Bible. I like the King James Version of the Bible and receive great spiritual sustenance there from.
Continue reading The Sun Also Rises
Emancipation Lecture 2010
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
Posted: August 04, 2010
This lecture was delivered on July 31, 2010 at the Center of Excellence, Macoya, Trinidad
This evening we are pleased that Professor Maxwell Richards, the president of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and his wife Ms. Jean Ramjohn Richards, newly elected prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and her worthy colleague Mr. Jack Warner have consented to join us this evening at our tenth annual Emancipation Day Dinner. We are also pleased that Mr. Keith Rowley and his wife have been able to share this important day with us. I especially want to welcome Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar to congratulate her on her victory and to say to her that we at the National Association for the Empowerment of African People and most African people in this society genuinely compliment you on your elevation as the first woman prime minister of our land. We share in the sentiments of Indo-Mauritian author Leel Gujadhu Sarup who observed: “I feel good about her victory. As someone who has researched indentureship, this result bring tears to my eyes. There are no limits for an Indian woman to prove her worth.”
Continue reading A Society in Transition: A Community at the Crossroads
Kamla: Emancipation about struggle, triumph
PRIME MINISTER Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday urged the nation to not only see Emancipation Day as merely a public holiday but rather to reflect on the struggles of the ancestors of Afro-Trinbagonians who rose up from the chattel of slavery to take their rightful place in a free society.
Continue reading Emancipation: When Freedom Come
August 01, 2010
THE People’s Partnership has stamped its authority to govern the country over the next five years by convincingly winning two elections in as many months. Now, its leadership must be sensitive to the high expectations among a polls-drunk populace that was summoned to vote in six elections in ten years. The new Government faces the onerous task of governing a nation that can at times be overly demanding, somewhat fickle, and quick to condemn.
Continue reading Big win, bigger expectations
Fellow citizens. Today our nation commemorates the 172nd Anniversary of Emancipation in Trinidad and Tobago. That historic act on August 1, 1838, destroyed the moral and legal basis of a system, which allowed human beings to be classified as chattel and denied the most basic human rights.
Continue reading Prime Minister’s Emancipation Day 2010 Address
Chamber congratulates PM Kamla and Partnership
Kamla: T&T must not go back to old days
T&T must never go back to the days of the “old corrupt, arrogant, self-serving politics of the past,” says Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
Absent PNM MPs affected Diego results
Significantly two of the three MPs, Diego Martin North East MP and former Works Minister Colm Imbert who was also an aspirant to the PNM political leadership and Amery Browne were absent from the local government election campaign.
Continue reading PP Trumps PNM in Local Govt Poll