Category Archives: Letters

A nineteen year old from Toco

Keshorn Walcott at welcoming ceremony, Piarco International Airport
Keshorn Walcott at welcoming ceremony, Piarco International Airport

A nineteen year old, with no international senior experience, who is not on the Grand Prix circuit, who is not in college, who has not participated in Commonwealth Games or World championships, goes in one month less one day from being the World Junior champion to being the Olympic champion in his first major international outing.
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Replacing Privy Council with CCJ Not a Priority?

lettersTHE EDITOR: We must pay close attention to what our political leaders say, sometimes casually, sometimes not. In an interview with the BBC Caribbean Service (before it was shut down) while in London, our Prime minister said that replacing the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice was not a priority for her government.
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Open Letter to Bro. Dookeran and the PP Gov’t

lettersDear Bro. Dooks,

When it come to books, I can’t win you at all, but when it come to common sense, I ahead by ah mile. I could understand yuh strategy in not wanting to continue in the vein of the previous regime, spending the people’s money willy nilly. And the fact that you will need some time to settle in before making your adjustments. But, when yuh saying and doing every thing to convince me that the treasury is empty, and the country don’t have money, please stop it. Like yuh taking we for ah ride to get we giddy headed.
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On the death of Ramcharitar “Bull” Lalchan – OWTU stalwart

Ramcharitar LalchanLife can be strange sometimes. Last Sunday, while searching through a memory stick, I bounced-up upon some photos of Bull. I had taken them during an interview done with him in 2008. His eyes were as clear and as bright as ever. Everybody talks about his trademark beard, but his eyes were bright. Monday evening, I am driving down the highway and Comrade Gerry calls. As we say in Trinidad in our understated way, he told me “Bull gone through…”

We all know Bull the fighter. But I want to share a reminisce starting with my knowledge of him as a little boy right through to knowing him as a fighter for workers in Trinidad and Tobago. As little children he was part of the community of elders, in the sense of adults. Pointe-a-Pierre residential consisted of Hill, the two lanes, Poui and Railway avenue and later on Plaisance Park. Beaumont Hill was 10 minutes walk from Plaisance Park. You had to pass the lanes/avenues to get there and Auckington was the main playing ground.
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Emancipation Celebration?

EmancipationTHE EDITOR: After four hundred years of shackle slavery, and the worst kind of atrocities ever inflicted on any race of people bar none, all because of their melanin and without any apology and compensation, and therapy for Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome, I am totally puzzled and confused with the reason for the celebration of Emancipation.
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Retiring Teacher Needs Help

EmancipationTHE EDITOR: I am a retiring teacher who has served the government and the public for 33 plus years. Over the last few years, my health has deteriorated rapidly, up to being carried off to Mt. Hope because of a heart attack in the classroom. I endure two low-function kidneys, neuralgia, an inoperable hernia, depression, diabetes and uncontrolled high blood pressure…just to name a few.
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Emancipation 2010: ‘Ganges and the Nile’?

EmancipationTHE EDITOR: Possible points of confluence, and of departure between the ‘Ganges and the Nile’?

As Emancipation, T&T ’10 approaches, and considering possible choices for ongoing nationhood, three prescient thinkers, one in each of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, are worth citing. One is William Faulkner, the Nobel prize-winning American author; the other, George Santayana, the 19th century Spanish philosopher; and T&T’s David Rudder.
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Trinidad and Tobago Death Penalty Laws

HangingTHE EDITOR: We all know that after the most famous hangings in Trinidad and Tobago, which involved Nankissoon Boodram (Dole Chadee) and his 8 henchmen, the hanging of Anthony Briggs was the last the country has seen. Why? The main reason is a plethora of Human Rights Laws.
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Mysterious Detention of 17-Year-Old in the U.S.

AbuseTHE EDITOR: I wish to bring to your attention the detention of my 17-year-old daughter in the United States of America. She boarded a Continental flight at Piarco International airport on the night of Monday 5th July, 2010, at 9 p.m. to catch a connecting flight from New Jersey to Maryland. Upon arriving at the Immigration Transportation Hub at Newark International she was detained and remains so at present.
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