Category Archives: Politics

Independence King–a forgotten figure

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, September 2nd 2007

Independence Day Parade and Awards 2007As the nation marked its 45th anniversary of Independence last Friday, focus would have been on the many statements of achievements by leaders in the society, some criticisms of where we have failed, and on outstanding individuals, especially recipients of national awards. The fact that a society as diverse as ours has survived devious moves to divide us along racial and religious lines is something we ought to be proud of. We have also, to our credit, withstood several major political upheavals and lean economic times.
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Cudjoe’s Grasping At Straws

By Stephen Kangal
August 29, 2007

Congress of the PeopleHaving been controversially appointed via the political patronage route to the Board of the Central Bank (CB), nondescript Dr. Selwyn Cudjoe has to earn his political keep by splitting hairs between economics, monetarism and politics and labouring in vain with annoying trivialities to demonstrate his lack of true professionalism.

Were Dr. Cudjoe a self-proclaimed genuine disciple of the truth as he claims to, he would have done the requisite research as a professional. He should have compared the original text of the speeches delivered by the former Governor of the Central Bank with the edited text of those included in Mr. Dookeran’s book before casting premature, hasty, silly and politically motivated aspersions on the integrity of Dookeran the author.
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Hindu Oppression: Replying to Vijay Naraynsingh

Replying to Vijay Naraynsingh

By Marion O’Callaghan
www.newsday.co.tt
Monday, August 27 2007

IndiansI had mapped out in my mind what I would write for this Monday of the week of Independence Day Celebrations when lo and behold I come across Prof Vijay Naraynsingh’s address at the Fourth Mahant Ramdass Award Celebrations. I say to myself, “there goes again any hope of our living up to the promises of Independence and of a Republic.”
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The good times will not roll on forever

By Raffique Shah
Sunday, August 26th 2007

Natural GasPrime Minister Patrick Manning and his critics seem to be missing the main issue in the heated debate over the Ryder Scott report on our gas reserves. It’s not about how much gas there is, or how much more is waiting to be “discovered”. If some global energy experts are right, Trinidad and Tobago is sitting on possible reserves of 90 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas. And if, over the next ten years, we succeed in adding 25 per cent of that volume to our proved reserves, then Mr Manning’s industrialisation programme will be adequately serviced with its principal feedstock, relatively cheap gas. If they are wrong, if gas runs out in ten years, then we’d be left with a mass of abandoned, rundown plants, much the way Texaco left us holding a skeletal refinery that was on the brink of collapse.
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Budgetary exercise in futility

Dr. Kwame Nantambu
August 22, 2007

Red HouseNow that the TT $42.2b 2007-08 budget has been presented to the citizenry of TnT, the casual, albeit non-political observer is only forced to conclude that it was a budgetary exercise in futility on the heels of a general election.

Indeed, “the Arithmetic of the budget” suggests that the 5,000 plus workers of the Community Environment Protection Enhancement Program (CEPEP) and their families, the 26,000 new home owners and their families, and by extension, government ministers and their families are the only electoral entities who should vote for the PNM.
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‘An election budget’

Patrick Manning‘It’s all about love’
Prime Minister Patrick Manning yesterday delivered a “love budget” in which he gave big hugs to all pensioners, the ill, disabled and the poor. And he blew kisses to the delinquent taxpayer and the prudent saver as well as the returning national.

The $$ flow freely
…for pensioners, Cepep, URP workers, minimum wage earners

Increases in old age, National Insurance and Government pensions, wage hikes with backpay for Community-based Environment Protection and Enhancement Programme (Cepep) and Unemployment Relief Programme workers, plus a proposed Minimum Wage of $10 were presented to the public yesterday in Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s final budget of his term…
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Caroni Was Never a Drain on the Treasury

By Stephen Kangal
August 20, 2007

CaroniThe Sugar Cane Industry is now proving to be economically viable. But Government will not help the farmers (The Sugar Cane Co-operative) in their current proposals/ collaboration with a French Company because it will show PNM’s foolishness, lack of foresight and politically motivated spite.

The PNM Government finds itself between a rock and a hard place on the revival of the Sugar Cane Industry because they are torn between the imperatives of economics and politics and the latter always takes precedence.
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Winston Dookeran’s New Politics

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 19, 2007

Congress of the PeopleOne expected something new and refreshing when Winston Dookeran entered the political area and announced that “new politics” were the order of the day. In his attempt to offer an alternative to the PNM and UNC one felt that there would have been a stricter adherence to decency and truth and that he would have tried to lift the political discourse to a “higher” level. But, as the French says, the more things change, the more they remain the same; the newer the politics, the more repulsive is its contents.
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Gas equivalent of OPEC Needed

By George Allyene
www.newsday.co.tt
August 15, 2007

Natural GasWith the spectre of a relatively early end to Trinidad and Tobago’s natural gas reserves haunting the country following on the publication of a report which declared that gas reserves in TT would last for a mere 12 years, Government should lobby for the forming of a natural gas equivalent of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) with the immediate accent on an optimum price or system of taxation for the fast depleting asset.
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It’s About Time to Develop Laventille

By Michael De Gale
August 15, 2007

LaventilleThe government’s intention to develop Laventille though politically tactical is also vitally necessary if the social ills of this area are to be alleviated. Not only does this make economic sense but strategic investments in troubled communities are a sure way to address the social evils which has historically plagued communities where poverty rules supreme. Progressive social thinkers supported by statistics, shows that crime thrives where hope is stifled. Survival has always been the law of the jungle whether literally or metaphorically speaking.
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