Category Archives: Caribbean

Caribbean, COVID-19, General T&T, Health, Hinduism

A passage to India

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Newsday Editorial
March 05, 2021 – newsday.co.tt

COVID-19 VaccineIN 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.
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Africa, Caribbean, England, France, General T&T, Haiti, International, Racism Watch

Emancipating old narratives of ‘emancipation’

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…and examining colonials’ ‘deceitful bait-and-switch’

By Claudius Fergus
August 16, 2020 – wired868.com

Photo: ESC director of regional and African affairs Khafra Kambon (right) poses with the Emancipation monument.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.
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CARICOM, Elections, General T&T, Guyana

Making a Truce with Reality

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 21, 2020

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI 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.
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Barbados, General T&T, Health, International, Politics

Inhumane Treatment of Our Elderly In Barbados

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By Stephen Kangal
March 30, 2020

Stephen KangalThe 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.
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Caribbean, General T&T, Health, International

COVID-19: Not just a flu


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.
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Caribbean, CARICOM, Elections, General T&T, Guyana, Racism Watch

Granger Bent On Using Caricom Team to “Robber- Stamp” His Coup

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By Stephen Kangal
March 17, 2020

Stephen KangalIt 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.
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Caribbean, Elections, General T&T, Guyana, PNM, Politics

T&T’s Foreign Policy on Guyana Elections in Shambles

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By Stephen Kangal
March 10, 2020

Stephen KangalIn 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:
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Barbados, Caribbean, General T&T, Guyana, Oil and Gas, PNM, Politics

False and Misleading Expectations On Guyana’s Oil Bonanza

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By Stephen Kangal
February 25, 2020

Stephen KangalIn 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.
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Barbados, General T&T, Oil and Gas

Reckless with our National Interests in Barbados

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By Stephen Kangal
February 19, 2020

Stephen KangalIt was a catastrophic national disgrace in 2003 when former Prime Minister Patrick Manning allowed former Bajan PM Owen Arthur to unilaterally haul T&T before an International Tribunal that adjudicated on and established our bilateral EEZ maritime boundary. In the process the Tribunal ignored compelling legal precedent and allocated almost half of our legitimate and previously claimed maritime space to the exclusive jurisdiction and expanded maritime patrimony of Barbados in perpetuity.
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Finance, General T&T, Guyana, International, Oil and Gas, Politics, USA

Amen, Brother Gregory

By Raffique Shah
January 14, 2020

Raffique ShahIf we think that the Trinidad and Tobago economy is in for another rough ride this year, possibly rougher than what we experienced over the past five years, we should read some of the grim global economic outlooks projected by international agencies such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs et al for almost every country in the world.
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