Tag Archives: Kamla Persad-Bissessar

General T&T, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, UNC

Preparing the Way for Kamla – Pt 6

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 11, 2018

PART 6

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIf one listened to the scholars and scribes, one would think that when the Indians came to Trinidad in 1845 they met a barren land where Africans played and joked around. No one would believe that those Africans, working from sunup to sundown, made William Hardin Burnley, an Englishman who came to Trinidad in 1802, the richest resident slave owner in the West Indies (see my forthcoming book, The Slave Master of Trinidad).
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Preparing the Way for Kamla – Pt 5

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 4, 2018

PART 5

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI have rarely received so many responses to my articles as those I received about my previous column. Once I had the temerity to describe the business activities of the Syrian-Lebanese community I opened up a whole batchak nest unleashing the deadly fury that such colonies contain.

Ant colonies, made up of thousands of insects, are precise, efficient and an organized machine. They behave as a deadly unit. E. O. Wilson, the evolutionary biologist explained, “The activities of the individuals in an ant colony are so perfectly integrated it is almost as though they were part of a single organism. The insects do everything by instinct and they literally are programmed automatons.”
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, UNC

Preparing the Way for Kamla – Pt 4

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 25, 2018

PART 4

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeSixteen years hence, Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) will celebrate its two hundredth anniversary since slavery ended formally. As I open my eyes, I am not sure I can see as clearly as the Minister of Finance how the African population will be positioned within the society in 2034.

Last Sunday I argued that by 2030, the Indian population will grow to between 588,000 and 776,000 people or 41 percent of the population; Africans will grow to between 525,000 and 615,000 people but remain about 36 percent of the population; and the mixed population will grow to between 339,000 and 417,000 people or 22 percent. In short, the African population will have dropped from 73 percent in 1803 to 36 percent in 2034.
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Crime in T&T, General T&T, PNM, UNC

Preparing the Way for Kamla – Pt 3

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 20, 2018

PART 3

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIt’s an iconographic image, one that is indicative of our times: the destruction of black men in an age of unreason and indifference.

There they are: a brother in a blue polo shirt that reads “salopian” on his breast. Another brother holds him back as he vents his anger against Laventille West MP Fitzgerald Hinds on Old St. Joseph Road. Brother Hinds, decked out in a Panama hat and trademark deadlocks that falls below his waist, seemed absolutely engrossed in the pain and anger directed against him (Guardian, June 9).
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Gender, General T&T, Hindu, India, People's Partnership, Politics, Race and Identity, UNC

Preparing the Way for Kamla – Pt 2

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 11, 2018

PART 2

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn January 29, 2011 after the People’s Partnership government was elected, I participated in a conference on multiculturalism that was sponsored by the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) Trinidad and Tobago. Kamla and Sat were thick as thieves then and Kamla’s government decided that multiculturalism would be T&T’s cultural policy.
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General T&T, Hindu, Hinduism, Religion, Schools, UNC

Preparing the Way for Kamla

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 04, 2018

PART 1

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIt was Indian Arrival Day. I just had to go down to Paravati Girls Hindu College, Debe, to hear what Sat Maharaj, leader of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) had to say about the importance of Indian Arrival Day to his community and his response to the negative media coverage that attended his demand that Nafisah Nakhid not wear her hijab at his Maha Sabha School, which he said violated the school’s dress code.
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General T&T, Hinduism, Islam, Religion, UNC

Sat still stirring religious intolerance

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By Raffique Shah
May 31, 2018

Raffique ShahSat Maharaj can manufacture a controversy in the calmest situation. He knows that the fundamental rule for staying alive in public life, and more importantly looking lively even though you may be half-dead is to get embroiled in “kuchoor”, as Indians would say, and do the most outrageous things to command media attention.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, UNC

Permission Please, Sir

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 3, 2018

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn Monday I attended UNC’s Monday Night Forum. Nothing out of the ordinary, I thought. I have always attended political meetings of every stripe to understand the political currents of my society and the world. I never supported Tapia, but Lloyd Best and I remained the best of friends. We attended the same primary school.

In 1972 David Abdullah contested the Tunapuna seat as a candidate for the ULF. I voted for the PNM. We remain friends. I was never a fast friend of Basdeo Panday but nothing stopped me from attending ULF meetings at Mid-Center Mall and other places. In August of last year, Nicole Dyer-Griffith was contesting the leadership of Congress of the People. I attended a meeting at the Tunapuna Community Centre to hear what she had to say.
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity, Racism Watch, UNC

Contradictions & Counterfactuals – Pt 3

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 20, 2018

“…a state could never have been born without surplus.” —Yanis Varoufakis

PART 1 — PART 2 — PART 3

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeReading Ralph Maraj and Kamal Persad’s contributions, one would think that Eric Williams and the PNM were the worst things that ever happened to Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). They seem to suggest that if only Badase Sagan Maraj and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had won the 1956 general election T&T would have been a paradise.
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Africa, General T&T, Labour, Law, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity, Racism Watch, UNC

Contradictions & Counterfactuals – Pt 2

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 13, 2018

“…a state could never have been born without surplus.” —Yanis Varoufakis

PART 1 — PART 2

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn the nineteenth century Trinidad saw the first massive giveaway of lands and bonuses to the Indians in lieu of their passages to India. Those options were never available to Africans. This was the first step in the systematic dispossession of Africans in the land to which they had been brought. Few of us seem to remember it.

Fast-forward to one hundred and thirty years (around the year 2003) when a PNM government engineered another massive giveaway of lands, which is taking place in front of our eyes under the faulty premise that Indians had the first preference because they farmed the lands. This was/is strange logic since these lands belong to all nationals.
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