By Raffique Shah
January 24, 2026

For sake of country, more than people, I keep hoping the portents of an economic meltdown that stand menacingly watching at Trinidad and Tobago will attempt for yet another time in its history to stave off the doom and gloom that threaten.

In my time, at my age (I’m approaching 80), I have seen God or whatever deity people worship smile at this cussed country and spare us the hardships, gore and misery that other countries face year after year. In my time, born in 1946 as I was, I have watched Trinis “wine” through hurricane, earthquakes, fire, floods and worse, while our neighbours up the Caribbean Sea, in Latin and North America, are bullied and beaten as they face the wrath of God or whoever else directs the show.
Continue reading Country over the unpatriotic →

By Raffique Shah
January 17, 2026

The first time I intervened in Tobago’s politics was in their first Tobago House of Assembly election in 1980. In my innocence, I thought it was a harmless gesture that should have offended no one. This was the latest attempt at constitutional change that should have given the island a greater degree of autonomy, much like self-government.

In the earlier 1976 general election for Trinidad and Tobago, we had reached an agreement of sorts with ANR Robinson’s Democratic Action Congress (DAC) to not contest the two Tobago seats. However, we felt it was necessary that we have a presence in the sister isle.
Continue reading No war over Tobago →

By Raffique Shah
December 20, 2025

It’s perhaps because those were earlier days and easier times when the population could make do with simple things that gave us pleasure and joy to own. Or it could be that most of the population decades ago were relatively poor. But whatever the reason why we did not enjoy the most expensive fruits, foods and things that cost plenty in general did not matter anyway.

One hundred years after the abolition of slavery, when the Africans who came in bondage had settled among their one-time captor in ways that were inconceivable when the British Lion still roared, and now among the world the beast no longer sported the fearsome jaws that made lesser mortals tremble with fear…those people, along with Indians and other orientals—Chinese…they were pursuing their full freedom, nothing less.
Continue reading Battering the Christ Child →

By Raffique Shah
December 13, 2025

As we move on past the first quarter of the 21st century, I follow with keen interest man’s search for power and control of our section of the universe in which we dwell.

We do this at a dizzying pace. Consider this: man first ignited fire over 400,000 years ago. Later on that same fire would help him soften and bend hard materials like iron to form weapons, tools, and it even paved the way for the development of the manufacturing industry, science and medicine. From the malleable iron we would get steel which is used in construction and other projects.
Continue reading BrinkSmanship on our Shores →

By Raffique Shah
December 13, 2025

As we move on past the first quarter of the 21st century, I follow with keen interest man’s search for power and control of our section of the universe in which we dwell.

We do this at a dizzying pace. Consider this: man first ignited fire over 400,000 years ago. Later on that same fire would help him soften and bend hard materials like iron to form weapons, tools, and it even paved the way for the development of the manufacturing industry, science and medicine. From the malleable iron we would get steel which is used in construction and other projects.
Continue reading BrinkSmanship on our Shores →

By Raffique Shah
November 23, 2025

It would later be branded “The Summer of Discontent”, a period during which the temperature and humidity of the island-state rose to intolerable levels, where natives and tourists alike walked around saturated in sweat. Tensions in the society rose to threatening heights. It was as if the population would implode with a fierceness that had never been seen before. Yet, nothing like that happened. Seething in sweat-driven fury, the natives wore their discontent with stoic harmony, leaving a façade of happiness that belied the building hate that will consume this country, someday, someday.
Continue reading Government boots →

By Raffique Shah
November 15, 2025

When crimino­logist Daurius Figueira speaks to us citizens on drug trafficking, murder and other crimes related to them, we’d better listen.

You see, much unlike Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America, who sees the narcotics trade in the world as nothing more than a board game, Daurius knows and has studied the innards of the drug trade. He has witnessed the savagery of the wars by overlords for control of the cocaine market internationally. The Pablo Escobars of Latin America, in the relatively short time that they controlled their base in Central and South America, reduced large Latin American nations to nothing more than a gangster’s paradise—which they fought Washington and the American government with to stamp their control over crime and politics.
Continue reading No mandate for war →

By Raffique Shah
November 01, 2025

As I watched and listened to television news focused on the unfolding story about the massacre of hundreds of Brazilians in the slum city of Rio de Janeiro in a war against gangs and drug dealers and traffickers. I recoiled in horror when I realised this was happening in real time.

Here was I, veteran campaigner against cruel and unusual punishment and harsh actions against a people, almost enjoying these savage images of hundreds of mainly young suspected criminals/gang members and drug traffickers, and sundry crooks caught in the cross-fire. I alerted my friends to the report which we paid attention to diligently until someone asked: Is this in Sudan or the Congo?
Continue reading Greedy Colonisers →

By Raffique Shah
October 18, 2025

At first, I thought I had completed a full circle. You see, I was just about ten years old when I got a notion of what a full circle was: you just go around, and around. In my 80th year I am seeing a full circle with the “make-work programme” that had started out as the Prime Minister’s “special works” programme with much fanfare. I had learnt of it in the newspaper which my father bought ritually every Sunday morning.
Continue reading The first circle →