By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 02, 2012
The news flooded the airways and inundated the newspapers: “Vidwatie Newton, the sister of Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar, traveled first class when she accompanied the PM on her recent trip to India…The total cost of Newton’s travel to India was $233,600” (Express, April 27).
Continue reading Stealing from the Public Purse
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 25, 2012
Dr. Karl Case, a dear friend and one of the most eminent economists in the United States, has always pointed out to me that part of the greatness of the United States lies in innovative scientific research that takes place at its MITs (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and its California Techs; in its Silicone Valleys and Route 128 in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Case should know. He is one of the founders of the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index, the leading indicator for the US housing market; a member of the Standards and Poors Index Advisory Committee and the Academic Advisory Board of the Federal Reserve Board of Boston; the co-author of Principles of Economics that is used in over 300 colleges and universities in the United States. Not only is he knowledgeable but he has proved his mettle in the hard, cold world of United States capitalist market.
Continue reading The New Barbarians
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 18, 2012
I never thought that Patrick Manning was such a genius and soothsayer, especially when he told us that one could turn ordinary CEPEP managers into captains of national and international industries; that, in fact, they could run corporations worth billions of dollars without flinching; and all that one needed to be a servant of the people was commonsense and a level head. In this formulation education attainment, business acumen, management skills, experience and maturity do not matter. To hear the PP tell it, these are just overrated and unnecessary appendages that have no place in a modern economy.
Continue reading Manning, The Genius
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 11, 2012
It’s either the PP and its ministers have gone mad or they want to take us back into a past we repudiated a long time ago. It was not such a long time ago that Verna St. Rose Greaves was seen ringing a bell, walking barefooted in front of Salvatori’s building on Fredrick Street and engaging in what she called a one-woman protest against a perceived injustice. Now, she is a minister; a relatively enfeebled attempt at dissent by Cheryl Miller, a worker in her ministry, is enough to have St. Rose Greaves declare Miller unstable and tossed into an insane asylum for two weeks against her will.
Continue reading Madness All Around
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 03, 2012
Now that Jack Warner has won PP’s chairmanship, there is a rumor that Winston Dookeran may be leaving the legislature to join the IDB in Barbados and Marlene Coudray is preparing to fight San Fernando East, it is time to ask whether the PNM is organized is to face the challenges that lie ahead in the short-term (such as a Tunapuna and San Fernando bye-elections) and in the long-term such as the general election of 2015.
Continue reading The Fat Ass Brigade
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 27, 2012
The Costeña aircraft that took us to Bluefields on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua landed on a narrow airstrip located on the edge of a lagoon that buffers the land mass from the Caribbean Sea. A narrow lane, a tract traversising a ravine, acted as our path from the aircraft to a tiny building that announced itself as the immigration office. The building was modesty itself. The immigration officer demanded our passport before we entered one of the more neglected parts of the country that reminded me of Trinidad during the 1950s.
Continue reading Bluefields, Nicaragua
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 14, 2012
The announcement that the US, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany plan to reopen negotiations with Iran to solve the controversy around Iran’s nuclear program could not come at a better time for President Barak Obama. It gives him a little wriggle room to circumvent the disingenuousness of the Republicans in this matter.
Continue reading Obama’s Dilemma
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 07, 2012
Roodlal Moonilal and the UNC-led coalition were quick to use Louis Lee Sing’s letter to demean Kieth Rowley. As it turned out, this was much to Louis’ misfortune and a mis-calculation on his part. But God is a good God. Sometimes out of evil commeth good and out of malevolence commeth comity; that is, the recognition among members of a social community that they possess values of decency and fair play that transcend the meanness and commess of a vagabond entity. Ultimately, that is what Anil Roberts’ amendment of the No Confidence motion was all about.
Continue reading Roget Makes the First Move
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 01, 2012
Whatever else Keith Rowley may not be doing, he has certainly put the fear of God, or is it Lord Rama, into the hearts of the members of the UNC-led Government. Surujrattan Rambachan, the Foreign Minister, says that Rowley’s motion is “vexatious, frivolous and irrelevant.” Yet the UNC has undertaken to conduct three public meetings to mobilize its base and every one of its twenty-nine members of parliarment are slated to speak on the motion. That does not seem to be the kind of response that one mounts against a vexatious, frivolous and irrelevant motion, but then there is always a disparity between what the UNC says and what it does.
Continue reading A Chink in the Armor
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 22, 2012
I was stuck by Michael Narine’s post, “Culture is a ploy for more state money” and Newsday’s headline “Calypso gets $1M.” With that came a justification from Dr. Hollis “Chalkdust” Liverpool: “This is good for calypso. Calypso is the father of all different genres of music, so they must ensure that calypso gets a good prize. All these other genres of music: chutney, soca, they came out of calypso, so it’s only fair that calypsonians get a good prize.” I will not argue with the doctor’s thesis except to say that at the beginning of the 21st century we may have to revise our accepted concepts of the genre, its influences and the musical forms it has spewed.
Continue reading Carnival and Culture