By Raffique Shah
May 24, 2015
If the adage “the law is an ass” is held to be true-and over the years, I have heard eminent persons, many of them lawyers, cite it as gospel-then I must confess that some very senior attorneys in this country are confusing me to the point where I am beginning to think that I am an ass, or they are a pack of donkeys.
Hear me out, eh, before you ask me to stop braying.
Continue reading The law is an ass
By Raffique Shah
May 17, 2015
If you allow yourself to be consumed by politicking that more so in the run-up to elections, is a deafening cacophony that can distract you to death, you miss out on not-too-subtle changes that are altering the landscape fundamentally.
I am in my 70th year, and while some aspects of aging are catching up with me, I remain mentally alert, capable of digesting many of the exciting advances in technology that, for better or for worse, have opened up new horizons that we must learn to live with or find ourselves buried in the sands of time.
Continue reading Coping with the generation gap
By Raffique Shah
May 09, 2015
I seldom agree with pronouncements made by Basdeo Panday, such is my mistrust of a man I came to know before he became a big name in politics.
From early o’clock, meaning in 1973 when he was parachuted into leadership of the sugar workers union by the PNM (yes, you read right…check your history) to take up from where the other puppet, Bhadase Maharaj, had died leaving a vacuum, I recognised Panday for what he was—an opportunist posing as a pragmatist.
Continue reading Vengeance could strangle you
By Raffique Shah
May 03, 2015
One year ago, in this space, I wrote a column headlined “Dana’s Death in Vain”. It was written exactly one week after the popular, respected senior counsel Dana Seetahal was shot to death in what everyone who had his or her say, described as a “well-executed assassination”.
As the anniversary of her death passes without anyone being arrested or charged for her murder, I re-read that column.
Continue reading A horror story
By Raffique Shah
April 26, 2015
Trust Trinidadians, or more accurately Trini-politicians, to engage in verbal battle over almost every issue—from the distribution of pampers to mothers of newborn babies to building a multi-billion-dollar causeway from Port of Spain to Chaguaramas.
Most people never heard the word “causeway” before Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar uttered it at a UNC rally in Fyzabad last week.
Continue reading Causeway a lost cause
By Raffique Shah
April 19, 2015
On the morning of Monday, March 23, when I became aware of the massive traffic gridlocks in several strategic arteries across the country occasioned by the police purportedly conducting legitimate roadblocks, my immediate reaction was, “This is mutiny!”
Later that evening, when television footage showed police officers of varying ranks holding tens of thousands of law-abiding motorists and commuters hostage, trapped in scorching heat and toxic exhaust fumes with no chance to escape, I thought that by the following morning I would wake up to hear that scores of police officers had been suspended from duty pending investigations into their misconduct.
Continue reading Police Mutiny
By Raffique Shah
April 12, 2015
Collectively, the so-called trolls on social media may be a pain in the rear for bona fide journalists and columnists in the mainstream media, operating as they do behind anonymity and bound by no rules of engagement or laws of libel and slander, while we have so many strictures, from word-count to sanitised lyrics, we write under the gun, in a manner of speaking.
And yes, it hurts when these mindless cowards spew their venom, delving into journalists’ private lives, distorting facts, promoting fiction and wallowing in half-truths. The current crop seems to have taken a fancy to attacking female writers, probably believing that they would drive their victims to tears, or worse, into depression.
Continue reading Bulwarks of democracy
By Raffique Shah
April 05, 2015
The Easter weekend has always been a period of intense religious activities for Christians in the country, and one for recreation and relaxation for others in the society. As a child growing up in a Muslim home in the 1950s, I was very aware of its significance to Catholics and Anglicans in particular, since both had (and still have) churches in the Freeport/Boccarro districts where we lived.
Continue reading Age of innocence
By Raffique Shah
March 29, 2015
Desperation bordering on panic pushed the People’s Partnership into the abyss of indecency last Wednesday, which will be recorded as the day the Partnership lost the 2015 general election.
Driven by unbridled greed to hold on to power, hence the Treasury, by any means necessary, the Partnership members, all of them, even those who remained silent, are guilty of gang-raping Parliament, of reducing it to the biggest brothel this side of the Atlantic.
Continue reading ‘Lynching’ in the House
By Raffique Shah
March 22, 2015
It’s amazing how the 2015 general elections campaign is derailed by extraneous matters that have no bearing on the real issues that should under discussion.
With oil and gas prices trending lower, hence a projected shortfall in revenue of more than $7 billion for the current fiscal year, with the national debt rising as a consequence, and with tens of thousands of public sector workers, among them police, fire and prisons officers, clamouring for increased salaries for a period that has expired, the politicians are distracting the electorate with race-herrings and talk about dog and “cyat”.
Continue reading Buying cat in bag