By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 24, 2021
A few weeks ago I listened to young Jamaican student Deane Weatherly talk about the importance of Queen Nanny of the Jamaican Maroons to her and Jamaican national life.
Queen Nanny, the leader of one of the country’s maroon groups, defeated the British in the 18th century, thereby establishing Nanny Town, a maroon town in the Blue Mountain region.
Continue reading National heroes and history
By Raffique Shah
April 05, 2021
I suppose it had to come to this—an explosion of Covid-19 cases just when we thought we could see a ray of sunshine at the end of a year-long dark tunnel we’ve cautiously navigated, when the first tranche of vaccines had arrived, launching Trinidad and Tobago into the immunisation phase of the war against this deadly virus.
It’s not as if the surge in confirmed cases ambushed us. We were warned by the medical team that has thus far efficiently conducted the war against Covid-19, that should we continue to breach the simple safety practices that have worked for us, hence expose ourselves to regression, we would encounter a nasty backlash. But there are some among us who are plain “harden”, who must misbehave to look macho.
Continue reading Now’s not the time to misbehave
Newsday Editorial
March 05, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
IN ALL the recent instances of wrangling over vaccines from India, a key issue has been left unaddressed.
The heated reactions to both Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh’s mischaracterisation of the custody chain of vaccines donated by Barbados and Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s letter to the Indian Prime Minister have deflected attention from a more profound diplomatic quandary which this country faces – as well as Caricom as a whole.
Continue reading A passage to India
…and examining colonials’ ‘deceitful bait-and-switch’
By Claudius Fergus
August 16, 2020 – wired868.com
In defiance of the rapid community spread of Covid-19, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, kept the promise he made on Emancipation Day 2019 to unveil T&T’s first emancipation monument—the only live public event on Emancipation Day 2020.
Like many thousands of other Trinbagonians, I missed the commemorative spectacles of the longest day in the Pan-African Festival’s calendar. But instead of regrets, the occasion motivated me to reexamine the intellectual underpinnings and contradictions of Britain’s 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.
Continue reading Emancipating old narratives of ‘emancipation’
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 21, 2020
I have been following the “the polytricks” taking place in Guyana, a land that “has been a torn and tortured terrain with divisive seeds sown in the colonial waters” as Sir Hilary Beckles described it (Express, July 13.) It’s not an overreach to say we are witnessing a replay of a traumatic encounter that took place years ago.
In 1970 Forbes Burnham declared Guyana a Co-operative Republic. I visited Guyana in 1972, the year in which the first Carifesta and the Non-Aligned Nations’ conference took place under the aegis of Comrade-Leader Burnham. It was a new and exciting time.
Continue reading Making a Truce with Reality
By Stephen Kangal
March 30, 2020
The PNM Government in categorically refusing to arrange entry/arrival home of 35 of our elderly nationals and having forced Barbados to quarantine them somewhere at their own expense when they arrived at Grantley Adams Airport from South Africa via the UK is in flagrant violation of customary law on the treatment of nationals, consular duty and indeed plain humanitarianism.
Continue reading Inhumane Treatment of Our Elderly In Barbados
Journalist goes undercover at “wet markets”, where the Coronavirus started | 60 Minutes Australia
Mar 8, 2020 – The predictions about the coronavirus catastrophe grow more ominous by the day, and despite the best efforts of countries like Australia in enacting emergency action plans to contain the disease, its spread continues at a worrying rate. Even the World Health Organisation forecasts a world of pain. It says the virus poses a greater global threat than terrorism. That’s bad enough, but medical experts tell 60 MINUTES it’s actually even more terrifying.
Continue reading COVID-19: Not just a flu
By Stephen Kangal
March 17, 2020
It is very clear that incumbent Guyanese President David Granger’s current agenda is to use the third- appointed Caricom Observer but low level Team to rubber-stamp and add some “legitimacy” to his virtual “coup” attempt of the Guyana Elections 2020.
One must appreciate that this intervention Team was hurriedly constituted by current Caricom Chairman, Mia Mottley after all the accredited Observer Missions that witnessed the conduct of the March 2 elections as well as the three recounts of the Region Four poll, unanimously criticised that ‘process’ used by Returning Officer (RO) Vraimont Mingo as being illegal and lacking in both credibility and transparency.
Continue reading Granger Bent On Using Caricom Team to “Robber- Stamp” His Coup
By Stephen Kangal
March 10, 2020
In the absence of Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley from T&T the foreign policy position and posturing on Guyana today seems to be in total shambles, nonsensical if not very contradictory and inconsistent at worst.
Its policy of detached non-interference that gained traction in the Maduro political crisis in Venezuela cannot be applied willy -nilly to the current stalemate in finalising the official results of the Guyanase elections for three unique reasons:
Continue reading T&T’s Foreign Policy on Guyana Elections in Shambles
By Stephen Kangal
February 25, 2020
In a Statement delivered at the Opening of the Energy Conference recently Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley dishonestly sought to create false and misleading expectations in an election year namely that:
– T&T can gain continental shelf-access to and cash in on the huge hydrocarbon producing resources currently being exploited by Guyana, sometime in the future;
– by getting the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental to agree to extend the maritime limits of T&T beyond 200 miles measured from its straight archipelagic baselines promulgated in 1986 by Order in complete violation of the provisions of the 2006 T&T/Barbados Arbitral Tribunal Award, the 1993 TT/Venezuela Delimitation Agreement and the tenets of the 1986 Law of the Sea Convention.
Continue reading False and Misleading Expectations On Guyana’s Oil Bonanza