By Raffique Shah
April 16, 2023
The criminal underworld has expanded and intensified its war against mostly law-abiding citizens by mounting brazen attacks against selected targets in open thoroughfares, damn the innocent victims who are seen as collateral damage. They have expanded ‘home invasions’ to the extent they now dominate the news.
Continue reading Three Patriotic Tinis
By Raffique Shah
April 10, 2023
I believe it was the night before Holy Thursday, listening to news on radio or television, I paid attention up to when the announcer counted past seven murders. They might have been over a period longer than 24 hours. They might even have been less than the full day’s score. What did it matter? I asked myself—and continued doing whatever I was doing.
Continue reading Has God Forsaken Us?
By Raffique Shah
April 03, 2023
As we mature in life, reaching what most people consider their mid-years, we may occasionally pause and consider what older folks have been preaching for as far back as we remember: you lose so many friends in your latter life, it’s not funny. I am seventy-seven, and I often consider that in my tiny community, there are only two other men, no women, of similar age who can reflect on events that occurred when we were, say, forty.
Continue reading Old Friends
By Raffique Shah
March 27, 2023
Once in a while, when the nation’s ruling elites are summoned to put on display their airs and wears, we at the lower rungs of the social ladder get opportunities to view how those who consider themselves the upper castes parade like peafowls in the finest garments their TT dollar can buy. Fortunately for us lesser mortals television cameras are just about everywhere, especially when ceremonies, rituals and often times plain bad manners come under close scrutiny of the ordinary citizens who look on with expressions of disgust at these pseudo-elites. The installation last week of Christine Kangaloo as president of the republic steered pretty clear of pomp, splendour and those delightful breaches of etiquette that set off gossip among those not invited, those invitees who chose to deliberately stay away and the public who, for entertainment from the upper classes, would otherwise watch ‘Keeping up Appearances’.
Continue reading Please read, Excellency
By Raffique Shah
March 20, 2023
You will think that a political party anywhere in the world that commands the lead stories in at least two national television newscasts per week; add for measure twenty-plus radio stations, most of which are ethnically weighted in favour of the party’s support base; three daily newspapers that go the extra mile to be fair to you, with even your lies making the cut, unlimited social media posts on the various sites, again in your favour… The party stages at least one public meeting per week that is also broadcast live on radio and at times, on television; flavor the above with, on balance unlimited parliament broadcasts that you control, if only by the volume, antics and other eye-catching tricks; sundry anti-government public meetings, often staged or influenced by the party’s activists that sometimes generate their own free media access, and so on…
Continue reading A Wasteland of Hubris
By Raffique Shah
March 13, 2023
Surely, we deserved better than that, Leila sighed audibly as she aside the device on which she had been reading a news report. I thought I knew what report it was, but I felt in the baiting mood, so I asked ‘What are you upset over? Who deserved better?’
‘I’m talking about the twenty year old corruption matter involving the state vs Basdeo Panday and others. The state under which heading the DPP must fall, withdrew one of the corruption matters yesterday.’
Continue reading Wuss dan dat
By Raffique Shah
March 06, 2023
The dizzying pace at which politicians who have promoted themselves as contenders for top positions in government, see things fall apart around them, is an ominous collapse of a political system that seems to have been built to secure the ruling elites. The relics of a post-colonial era that guaranteed the grandchildren of the favoured ones is being battered every-which-way leaving many of them who now hold strategic positions in governments, unsure of their future, and quite likely afraid of what tomorrow may bring.
Continue reading Manufacturing Dictators
By Raffique Shah
February 27, 2023
If anyone in the country was surprised by the minimalist style that almost all the designers opted for in outfitting female masqueraders, such poor folks have either detached themselves from Carnival for some time, or ceased to be bothered by the near nakedness of thousands of adults, whose gyrations and simulations of sex, could one day erupt into an orgasmic explosion, the effects of which might send some uncontrollable individuals into uncharted dimensions, something akin to never-ending euphoria on steroids.
Continue reading Porning our Carnival
By Raffique Shah
February 20, 2023
As someone who has long advocated the dismantling of over-generous subsidies for a number of goods and services, many readers may find my change in position opportunistic, and proceed to lump me with politicians who thrive on hollow rhetoric such as “freedom for the masses”, even the more vacuous slogan, “freeness for the masses”.
These are flights of fancy that the younger among my generation when our larger-than-life giants like Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Patrice Lumumba and Malcolm X walked among us, preaching revolution through which we would establish an egalitarian world.
Continue reading Go softly on utility rates
By Raffique Shah
February 13, 2023
Every year, ritually, come Carnival, steel pans and drums rescued from the paws of scrap-metal hustlers hunting for a few dollars, or rust that’s threatening to render them useless, join hundreds of cellos, bass and retired hubcaps from derelict motor vehicles, coming together to treat music lovers with the most scintillating sounds and songs that could allow the “mad blood” in all of us to enjoy “we music”.
Continue reading There is hope yet for pan