Tag Archives: Raffique Shah

Trinis can, must, do this

By Raffique Shah
October 12, 2023

Raffique ShahFinance Minister Colm Imbert is too experienced in Cabinet to not know when he fixed the new minimum wage per hour—TT$20.50—he was, in fact, proclaiming a not-so-new maximum wage.

During my years as an active trade unionist, I became all too familiar with this legitimate, lawful reaction of many employers, mostly in the commercial, agricultural and some heartless manufacturers, stating to anyone who seeks employment with them, “You will be paid government’s rates…that is, $20.50 an hour, $164 a day for daily paid and roughly $3,300 for the month.”
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Bloody Tuesday

By Raffique Shah
October 03, 2023

PART 2

Raffique ShahRamdwar (Dennis) shouted, “Gas!”

Gas, meaning CS: Crowd Dispersal Gas commonly known as “tear gas”.

The police wasted no time. It was like the proverbial “dog whistle”. Every “ranker”, Randy Burroughs and his “Flying” squad were there, as well as a large contingent of recruits, pounced on the peaceful workers and farmers raining blows with riot staffs, which were thick and heavy. Many bones were fractured on that day.
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The true Bloody Tuesday story

By Raffique Shah
September 27, 2023

Raffique ShahIt was a chance encounter with one of only a handful of books on the contemporary history of Trinidad and Tobago that triggered memo­ries of another time, another day. I refer to the late Owen Baptiste’s publication, Crisis. Owen published that book in 1978, shortly after he quit the mainstream news­papers.

A bit of nostalgia struck me: I had to re-read something in it, and I thought why not the beginning. I should add that the front cover carries a photograph of three policemen dressed for internal security operations, wearing the then-traditional anti-riot garments and equipment.
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Power in the barrel of a gun

By Raffique Shah
September 19, 2023

Raffique ShahLike most people who live in this country, many of whom, like me, will never leave the twin-island republic to live any­where else in the world, I am not only concerned but I am disturbed by what seems to be a deteriorating crime situation, especially crime that involves violence. At a recent news conference, I heard Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, not for the first time say, “We have become a very violent society.” Judging from the reports of criminal activities that we get in the media, that perception seems to be the truth.
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What do they know of History

By Raffique Shah
September 12, 2023

Raffique ShahAs soon as he confirmed that I was ‘the’ Raffique Shah with whom he wanted to speak, he quickly established his bonafides and pedigree as a Presentation College Chaguanas alum, a die-hard Pres Boy. He had attended out alma mater many moons ago but not as many as I have, given I must be a decade or more older than him. He, too, like so many boys from the Caroni plain had had the benefit of the college’s class education from the premier secondary school, we might say the ‘best’ in the country, but he went on to return ‘home’ as soon as he graduated from university and landed the job as a teacher at the institution. Therein lay the right he had earned to sing praises to ‘Pres’ or to tear it apart if he felt he didn’t like what he saw, or rather what he is seeing today.
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Ah Leaving

By Raffique Shah
September 05, 2023

Raffique ShahIf there is one thing Trinis like me, who still have an interest in Independence Day celebrations, look forward to, it’s the ever expanding volume of calypsoes that we enjoy coming from just about every radio and television station every year. We enjoy a bonus when, as happened this year, popular calypsonian and singer Denyse Plummer sadly passed on. Last year when Black Stalin [Leroy Calliste] passed on after a prolonged illness, his body of work being second in numbers only to Sparrow, we feasted for months on some of the best calypsoes ever, composed and sung by a bard of his stature.
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Our ‘lumpen intelligentsia’

By Raffique Shah
August 28, 2023

Raffique ShahIf Karl Marx were alive and still fighting to establish his elusive dream of a pure communist country, he might have been amused by a 21st-century phenomenon that he would have uproariously branded “the lumpen intelligentsia”. Of course, just about everyone so branded, and most who are not, will be equally lost. You see, the vocabulary nowadays has excised such words and terms as if their mere mention would leave a stain on them.

If you or I walked up to one-time die-hard communists such as Wade Mark, who was among a small band of Marxists who fought elections in 1981 but won hardly any votes, they’d likely tell you, “No, boy, ah doh do dat again.” So it’s left to a handful of us revolutionaries to at least keep the memories of another day alive, if not kicking.
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Love That Endures

By Raffique Shah
August 15, 2023

Raffique ShahA wave of emotions almost overwhelmed me. Yesterday Saturday she will have marked her seventy-sixth year on Earth. There are signs of aging, of course, but not too many that they will have diminished her beauty. Age has also come with some of the infirmities that accompany it, but none as crippling as Parkinson’s Disease that has lodged itself in me. Not that she needs reassuring, but I often profess my love to her. We smile at and with each other. Being my wife, she has been through what few women, especially the wives of public figures, endure.
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Emancipation: much more than pretty garb

By Raffique Shah
August 07, 2023

Raffique ShahIn order for someone to enslave another human being, that unconscionable sub-human must possess sinister ways, lack empathy, and compassion. In my view a human being cannot enslave another human being because all of the above are part of humanity, most of which must be missing for the enslaver to put another human being in chains—not necessarily physically but mentally, such that it compels the slave to serve the master.
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LGE: Political Veterans Last Hurrah

By Raffique Shah
July 31, 2023

Raffique ShahThe two main political parties in Trinidad and Tobago are taking the local government election, scheduled for two weeks tomorrow, very seriously. I expected the opposition United National Congress to maintain its momentum, which it has kept at a steady pace since it lost the 2015 general election, to keep the tempo going since it gained a few seats and the popular votes for its unrelenting pressure on the ruling People’s National Movement.
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