Tag Archives: Politics

General T&T, Opposition Party, People's Partnership, PNM, Politics, UNC

Marking time 50 years later

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By Raffique Shah
April 14, 2012

Raffique ShahFIFTY years after Trinidad and Tobago was granted independence, the tragedy of our politics is that it still revolves around the PNM, the party that took the country from colonialism through self-government and into independence. Indeed, the fact that the PNM remained in office for 36 of those 50 years is itself an indictment against the electorate. Worse than that, though, the three other concoctions that broke the PNM’s stranglehold—the NAR, the UNC, and now the UNC-dominated People’s Partnership—all had as their common bond, their raison d’etre, one mantra: we are against the PNM.
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Court, Gender, General T&T, Health, Law, Politics, Protest

Madness All Around

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 11, 2012

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIt’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.
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Court, Gender, General T&T, Health, Law, Politics

A primitive country

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By Raffique Shah
April 08, 2012

Raffique ShahTHE perception that there are more mad people outside the St Ann’s Hospital than there are inside that mental institution seems to be reality, following the forcible detention of public servant Cheryl Miller. I was outraged on learning of the woman’s plight, which only came to public attention when her co-workers protested her Gulag or Guantanamo-like situation. By then, this hapless citizen had already spent almost two weeks in the madhouse.
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Complaints, General T&T, Health, Politics

‘CHERYL NOT MAD’

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By Nalinee Seelal
April 03, 2012 – newsday.co.tt

VictimAn employee of the Ministry of Gender, Youth and Child Development remained at the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital yesterday, 13 days after she was snatched from her office by mental health officers and forcibly committed to the hospital.

Colleagues of Cheryl Miller yesterday demanded her immediate release from the psychiatric hospital declaring she is not mentally unstable and vowed to protest daily outside the ministry at Tower D, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain.
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CARICOM, Finance, General T&T, Politics

Oil and Gas Arithmetic

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By Raffique Shah
April 01, 2012

Raffique ShahTHE announcements of two new oil finds over the past two weeks generated excitement among many in the population. “God is a Trini!” screamed the Express headline, quoting the Prime Minister. Such was the importance of Petrotrin’s discovery of 48 million barrels of relatively light crude, it warranted a full house of ministers and top company officials at the Cabinet Media Centre.
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General T&T, Hindu, India, Opposition Party, People's Partnership, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity, Religion

Rowley Went To India Looking for Jhandis?

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By Stephen Kangal
March 29, 2012

Stephen KangalYears ago T&T’s former HC to India, Mr. Reginald Dumas went visiting the rural villages of the Indian state of Bihar assiduously looking for “jhandis” and found them. Last week another Afro-Tobagonian, Opposition Leader the Hon. Keith Rowley used the occasion of the CPA meeting being held in India to search for the elusive “jhandis” and according to him found none. And this after the PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar just returned from her Indian safari when the question of the rurally remote, sometimes inaccessible villages (pur) of the States of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar from which the “girmitiyas” came to T&T bearing their ‘Jahajee bundles” was well-documented.
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General T&T, India, Media, People's Partnership, Politics, Race and Identity, UNC

Jack Crossing: from Corridor to Caroni

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By Tony Fraser
March 28, 2012 – guardian.co.tt

Jack WarnerAustin “Jack” Warner has made the crossing over the political, ethnic, racial and geographic Rubicon—from the east-west corridor to Caroni—and has done so in spectacular fashion. Without the endorsement of the hierarchy of the United National Congress, indeed, against its wishes, Warner sauntered into the heartland of the UNC to capture the chairmanship of the party and by an extraordinarily wide margin—12,695 to 656 votes.
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General T&T, India, People's Partnership, Politics, UNC

Results of UNC Internal Elections

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United National CongressCOUDRAY COPS IT
San Fernando Mayor Marlene Coudray has copped a deputy leader position in the United National Congress (UNC) internal elections.

…SHE came, she saw and she conquered!

King Jack
WORKS and Infrastructure Minister Jack Warner’s popularity continues to grow by leaps and bounds within the United National Congress (UNC) as he convincingly beat his closest rival for chairmanship in the party’s internal elections in Saturday, by a whopping 12,000 votes.
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COP, General T&T, India, People's Partnership, Politics, UNC

UNC internals: theatre of the absurd

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By Raffique Shah
March 25, 2012

Raffique ShahI LEARNED a lesson in political morality — surely an oxymoron — at the politically tender age of 35. It came from the Machiavellian master himself, Basdeo Panday. Panday and I, along with George Weekes, Joe Young and others, had founded the United Labour Front back in 1976, when I was 30 years old. Within two years, Bas would “mash up” the organically integrated dream party when a number of us took what we thought were principled positions on fundamental issues, details of which are well documented.
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corruption, Finance, Gender, General T&T, Law, People's Partnership, Politics

Focus on substance, not fluff

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By Raffique Shah
March 17, 2012

Raffique ShahOVER the past two weeks or so, public attention has focused on two issues, with the concomitant raging debates in the media and online. The first surfaced when it was disclosed in Parliament that the State had met expenses for Prime Minsiter Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s sister to accompany her on official visits to Australia, India and elsewhere. The second pertained to Tobago Affairs Minister Vernella Alleyne-Toppin incurring private expenses on a Government-issued credit card that is intended for use by officials when they travel abroad.
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