Br Raffique Shah
July 12, 2018
I never thought I’d one day write a column that says what I’m about to. But as someone who has always put country before personal or ideological interests regardless of the fire I faced, I feel compelled to endorse calls for a radical restructuring of State-owned oil company Petrotrin.
If there is resistance to life-saving changes, declare the damn company bankrupt and shut it down.
Continue reading ‘Petrotrin: radical surgery…or die’
By Raffique Shah
July 07, 2018
You’d think with all the entertainment from and excitement over World Cup football in Russia, we’d be spared the drudgery of everyday crime, inexcusable lawlessness and political bacchanal at least for one month. After all, it seems that everyone is riveted to a television set somewhere on “match-days”, which have been every day, almost all day, over the past two weeks. In fact, football fever has intensified during the knockout matches that will climax when new champions are crowned on Sunday, July 15.
Continue reading ‘Frankie, don’t mess with us’
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 4, 2018
PART 5
I 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.”
Continue reading ‘Preparing the Way for Kamla – Pt 5’
By Raffique Shah
June 28, 2018
At two ends of the nation’s housing spectrum there are seemingly intractable problems that defy solutions unless the population is prepared to change the cultural mores that have contributed to us facing this conundrum.
At the base, we see tens of thousands of citizens ranging from low-income workers to no-income “lochos” clamouring for Government to provide housing for them. Many among these can afford to pay the subsidised rental or mortgage rates that the Housing Development Corporation, either directly or through certain mortgage facilities, charges for its low-end units.
Continue reading ‘The housing conundrum’
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 25, 2018
PART 4
Sixteen 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.
Continue reading ‘Preparing the Way for Kamla – Pt 4’
By Raffique Shah
June 21, 2018
It was on this historic day 45 years ago that I started a new chapter in my life-my involvement in the trade union fraternity, and more specifically, being part of the thousands who made the annual pilgrimage to Fyzabad to pay tribute to pioneers of the labour movement, more specifically Tubal Uriah Butler. From June 19, 1973 until I called halt to marching with my comrades in 2009, I never missed a Labour Day celebration in Fyzabad.
Continue reading ‘I cry for the Fyzabad I knew’
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 20, 2018
PART 3
It’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).
Continue reading ‘Preparing the Way for Kamla – Pt 3’
By Raffique Shah
June 15, 2018
Oftentimes, civic and professional organisations that stay aloof of the political mud-wrestling that has long been the dominant feature of our parliamentary system, provide citizens with greater clarity on legislation that impact our lives than our warring politicians do.
Such is the case with the controversial Property Tax Act and its many amendments. On every occasion that the legislation has come before Parliament, it has generated a fish-market-like cacophony and wild fear-mongering to the extent that an entire general election campaign (2010) was conducted on the theme “axe the tax”, and the Manning government fell, albeit on issues wider and larger than the tax.
Continue reading ‘Valuation Division off on wrong foot’
By Raffique Shah
May 24, 2018
It was perhaps an indicator of just how inured this society is to corruption that, except for an Express editorial, no one has commented on Justice Frank Seepersad’s scathing but incisive remarks in his ruling against Jack Warner in a $1.5 million lawsuit that reeked of political machinations.
The lawsuit was filed by Krishna Lalla, who admitted to being a supporter of the United National Congress, although he denied that the money he had “loaned” Warner in 2007 was a campaign contribution to the UNC for the election that year, which the party lost.
Continue reading ‘Campaign financing: laws will hardly help’
By Danielle Frederick
May 22, 2018
One would have hoped that a nation such as ours, created from genocide and enslavement, one which has felt the destructive, manipulative forces of colonialism would want to raise its voice clearly against war, oppression, exploitation of human beings and anything that threatens humanity. Alas not. The Trinidad and Tobago government has failed to issue any statement, whether in support or condemnation with regards to the actions of Israel against Palestinians. Being the descendants and continuing victims of white, male, Christian dominance and violence, it is hoped that we would come to our senses and stand for truth and justice, the foundation blocks upon which tyranny cannot stand.
Continue reading ‘As Israel murder Palestinians, where are we?’
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