By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe December 16, 2019 ON THURSDAY I read Jovanne Edmund’s protest against Junia Regrello being reappointed as the mayor of San Fernando. A day earlier I had seen a video in which Edmund had made a similar plea as she protested in front of San Fernando City Hall. Her gripe, according … Continue reading NOT BECAUSE ONE IS PARANOID…
By Clint Chan Tack October 11, 2019 – newsday.co.tt A statement issued by the Office of the President (OTP) does not appear to have answered questions about why guests invited to functions that it hosts may only bring legally married partners. The statement was issued after President Paula-Mae Weekes spoke about the issue before after … Continue reading Questions remain over presidential invitations
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe October 09, 2019 Trinidad and Tobago is a difficult, contradictory society. Every time we take one step forward, we also take two steps backward. Imagine a progressive leader saying that she won’t invite a man or woman to a government function unless he/she is accompanied by his/her married partner. One … Continue reading Turning the Clock Backward
By Dr Tye Salandy September 22, 2019 As I mentioned in the first article in this three part series, the Sedition Act is not archaic or outdated, but it was an extremely bad law in the first place given its deliberate vagueness, its colonial intentions and the way that it was weaponized against those who … Continue reading Sedition and other Nonsensical Colonial Laws
By Raffique Shah September 09, 2019 What possessed United National Congress leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar to unleash a loose cannon in the form of ex-soldier Carlton Dennie on an unsuspecting audience of party faithful a few Monday nights ago, we may never know. Surely she could not have known beforehand that the corporal, who had somehow … Continue reading Racism—last refuge of a scoundrel
Of Independence, sedition and legislative violence: how elitist laws have damaged the nation By Dr Tye Salandy September 02, 2019 UPDATED: September 03, 2019 Sedition, careful, careful how you talking … hey hey! Sedition, careful, careful whey you walking Incompetent idiots have genuine patriots Always under escort in the sedition court. —The Mighty Sparrow (Sedition) … Continue reading Independence, sedition and legislative violence
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe August 06, 2019 Last Sunday, four of the five Sunday columnists of this newspaper wrote about the crime problem that confronts the nation. The Sunday Guardian also published a long investigative piece on the subject. On Monday, Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon talked about the pervasiveness of crime and concluded that … Continue reading The Road Make to Walk…
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe July 30, 2019 With things getting hotter and deadlier, one recognizes how far our society has gone out of joint. With criminals finding more ingenious ways to avenge their grievances—like taking a boat from Sea Lots to catch their targets unaware in Las Cuevas—one wonders if the government and/or civic … Continue reading We are all in this Together
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe April 08, 2019 “Know you not that love, when firmly established, is priceless?” —Nana Asma’u, “Lamentation for ‘Aysha.’” I met Margaret Busby in the 1980s just after her press (Allison & Busby) published three volumes of C. L. R. James’s collected work (The Future in the Present [1977], Spheres of … Continue reading New Daughters of Africa
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe March 28, 2019 Tony Barber, Oxford scholar and European editor of the Financial Times, recalls an interesting occurrence when the European Union sought to write a European history book. “One historian from each EU member state was commissioned to write a chapter. The project was abandoned after the British complained … Continue reading Our Living Past