Tag Archives: T&T Govt

General T&T, PDP, PNM, Politics, THA, Tobago

COLONIAL TRAPPINGS

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 17, 2022

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn June 2001, the Japanese Black Studies Association invited me to deliver an address, “Identity and Caribbean Literature”, at Nara Women’s College, Nara, Japan (see trinicenter.com, June 24, 2001). Before I delivered my address, my host asked me to meet the president of her college, to which I agreed. I had stopped wearing ties because I considered it a useless trapping (literally) of colonialism. However, my host politely reminded me I had to wear a tie if I was going to see her president.
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health

Army of the vaccinated

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By Raffique Shah
January 17, 2022

Raffique ShahI am writing this column on Saturday morning, so I have no idea what the PM would have announced at his media briefing in the afternoon.

But with the drums of political war growing ominously louder by the day, and increasing in volume and tempo, and those who are looking to unseat his Government long before the due date for fresh elections, buoyed as they are by Watson Duke’s sound licking on the PNM in the recent Tobago House of Assembly election, they are doing everything to frustrate him, to goad the PM into calling snap elections, which they believe they can win, whoever “they” may be, whatever their agendas.
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health, Politics

Bring back the ‘Bull’

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By Raffique Shah
January 10, 2022

Raffique ShahNot even George Orwell, who wrote the right-wing classic Animal Farm which summarised workers in power, post-revolution, in the worst possible light, could have scripted the post-Covid tragi-comedy that premiered a few weeks ago, when the Delta variant of the virus first showed what it could do, and now Omicron is breaking box office records, leaving mankind stupefied.
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Elections, General T&T, PDP, PNM, Politics, THA, Tobago

Move Satan move

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 04, 2022

“You may know the man by the conversation he keeps.”

—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOur Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley, is reputed to have said to US President Joe Biden that the salient factor in our democracy is his capacity to listen to the opinions of his people. I hope he meant that he listened not only to what they say loudly and directly, but also to what isn’t said aloud but is equally as pertinent.

This is important: the Prime Minister’s success in office over the next four years depends upon his listening not only to what is said directly, but also to what is communicated silently.
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Business, COVID-19, Finance, General T&T, Health, Oil and Gas, Recession

Covid and gas pains: who’s crying now?

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By Raffique Shah
January 03, 2022

Raffique ShahThe Covid-induced confinement imposed on citizens by the Government provoked a range of reactions—from anger and drunkenness to solitude and self-pity. Some persons came perilously close to crossing the thin line between sanity and insanity.

I was lucky to have lived the multi-faceted life I did before the pandemic—soldier, adventurer, prisoner, politician, teacher and a range of other life-skills that prepared me for just about anything I might face during the pandemic. Of course, as a human being and more so a humanist, I was shocked by the mass of people globally who were impacted by the virus, by how many were dying “live” before the lenses of reporters’ cameras, ­agony etched on their faces, questions writ large on them: why me?
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health, Politics

Let Medical Professionals Speak on COVID Vaccines

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By Stephen Kangal
December 23, 2021

Stephen KangalThe emotionally charged response of Prime Minister Rowley to the Sunday Express feature article is exclusively more political than the requisite scientific in relation to his weak defense of the alleged low efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine.

He procured it with a secretive agreement from the Chinese with a huge cost — loan in a large quantity without obtaining any expected guarantee about its expected efficacy level even though scientists from developed countries refused to accept it as a genuine vaccine because trial results were not published globally and were not accessible.
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Education, General T&T

Human rights, equality and diversity

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 20, 2021

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeDespite its fancy-sounding title, “Human Rights, Equality and Diversity: An Inquiry into the Right to Equal Access to Education with Specific Focus on the Under-performance of Schools in Port of Spain and Environs”, the children in this area (mainly Africans) will be condemned to educational backwaters even as the Ministry of Education (MoE) continues with its anachronistic approach of not-educating our children.
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health, Politics

Do your duty, dammit!

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By Raffique Shah
December 20, 2021

Raffique ShahI do not believe there is a common factor that unites people of any particular pigmentation or persuasion across the world, except, perhaps, religious doctrines that are deemed to be the “words of God”, written or revealed by the Almighty Himself, hence not subject to alterations by man.

Those of us who have studied history know only too well that in the name of religion, of spreading the word of God, atrocities were committed, entire civilisations were wiped off the map, and the anointed soldiers of God just moved on to other souls to be saved by swiping heads off bodies, then raiding their treasures.
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General T&T, PDP, People's Partnership, PNM, THA, Tobago

We happy and we sad

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 13, 2021

“God don’t sleep! We want change. The ghetto youth, the old, the young, everybody come out because we want change and if Farley and the PDP do stupidness, we voting them out, too.”

—Lisa Mulcare, Express

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn August 2, 2020, prior to the general election in T&T, in a column entitled “Why I support UNC this time around”, I wrote: “Although PNM began as a movement that was cognisant of the needs of the under-class Indians and Africans alike—over the years it has come to take the support of black people for granted. One only has to look at the conditions under which many black people in depressed communities live to recognise that they have not been the recipients of PNM’s loving and tender care.”
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Elections, PDP, PNM, Politics, THA, Tobago

One-half apology to Farley

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By Raffique Shah
December 13, 2021

Raffique ShahOkay, I am prepared to give the new governor of Tobago one-half an apology for writing last week that he is a fool. “Be nice to the young man, nah… he trying to put together an energetic team to first salvage, then turn around the island’s economy…”

I gather as much, I responded, listening to him speak… But you and I know talk is cheap and promises even cheaper… until we see hard evidence of his performance, I shall stick with the half-apology.
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