Express Editorial
May 22, 2012 – trinidadexpress.com
THE “stand Strong” headline theme of the advertising for the People’s Partnership’s anniversary event on Thursday, must attract serious interrogation for its validity. The believability of print ads pushing that theme, appearing on Thursday, was immediately called into question by the leader of the Movement for Social Justice (MSJ), a member of the ruling coalition.
Continue reading What now, MSJ? T&T needs to know
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 16, 2012
Corruption takes various forms. Sometimes it is as deliberate as paying someone to give a view that is favorable to one’s position; sometimes it involves simply stealing another man’s purse through devious means; sometimes it entails padding the payroll so that someone gets more money than he or she worked for. Sometimes it even involves using one’s talent, be it mental or physical, and placing it at the behest of the highest bidder. Sometimes it is as blatant as the acts of Calder Hart or Bernie Madoff.
Continue reading Corrupting Our Morals
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 02, 2012
The news flooded the airways and inundated the newspapers: “Vidwatie Newton, the sister of Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar, traveled first class when she accompanied the PM on her recent trip to India…The total cost of Newton’s travel to India was $233,600” (Express, April 27).
Continue reading Stealing from the Public Purse
By Stephen Kangal
May 01, 2012
Let me categorically state that the printed media especially since 2004 when the TT/Barbados boundary dispute first erupted and counting, has never gotten it right in reporting about our very specialized maritime boundaries matter. They have done a great disservice to T&T. I cannot identify any single journalist past or present who has taken the time to research and/or to consult responsibly on this matter that the freedom of the press demands of media houses.
Continue reading Get it Right Before You Write on TT’s Maritime Boundaries
By Stephen Kangal
April 24, 2012
During the recent visit made to her ancestral homeland, Bihari village of Bhelupur PM Persad-Bissessar issued a most profound, conclusive, unnoticed and defining statement on her nature and nurturing en route to becoming Prime Minister. She confessed quite categorically to the Bhelupuris gathered that “…whatever I am today is because Bihar is in my DNA and whatever my ancestors taught me…”.
Continue reading Nature and Nurturing of a Prime Minister
By Raffique Shah
April 22, 2012
THE imbroglio in the People’s Partnership Government prompted me to examine more closely how and why the People’s National Movement (PNM) has been central to the electoral politics of this country for more than 50 years. This may sound like flawed logic. But I noted that several of the principal players in the People’s Partnership impasse have said that whatever their differences or their failure to settle them, the parties that form the current government must stay together to prevent the PNM from regaining power.
Continue reading The more things change…
By Raffique Shah
April 14, 2012
FIFTY 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.
Continue reading Marking time 50 years later
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 11, 2012
It’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.
Continue reading Madness All Around
By Raffique Shah
April 08, 2012
THE 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.
Continue reading A primitive country
By Nalinee Seelal
April 03, 2012 – newsday.co.tt
An 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.
Continue reading ‘CHERYL NOT MAD’