By Anna Ramdass
May 18, 2023 – trinidadexpress.com
The people of Trinidad and Tobago have a right to vote.
This was the loud and clear message from the Privy Council law Lords who delivered judgement against the Government’s decision to postpone the Local Government Elections and extend the life of councils for one year.
Continue reading GOVT LOSES AT PRIVY COUNCIL – ‘PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO VOTE’
By Raffique Shah
March 06, 2023
The dizzying pace at which politicians who have promoted themselves as contenders for top positions in government, see things fall apart around them, is an ominous collapse of a political system that seems to have been built to secure the ruling elites. The relics of a post-colonial era that guaranteed the grandchildren of the favoured ones is being battered every-which-way leaving many of them who now hold strategic positions in governments, unsure of their future, and quite likely afraid of what tomorrow may bring.
Continue reading Manufacturing Dictators
By Raffique Shah
August 29, 2022
It’s not so much that we have little or nothing to celebrate on the 60th anniversary of our Independence from Britain, as so many who swear they are patriots, but whose patriotism swings with the pendulum of their political party’s fortunes, which almost always are linked to their personal fortunes.
It’s more that our democracy has been carved up into near-equal but uneven parts in such manner, to misquote Irish poet William Yeats in his near-prophetic masterpiece, “The Second Coming”, “…Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction/While the worst/Are full of passionate intensity…”
Continue reading Show me your leader
By Raffique Shah
August 08, 2022
Continuing where I ended last Sunday, by the turn of the millennium and the century, the Opposition United National Congress had positioned itself to capitalise on the vulnerabilities of the People’s National Movement, which had been weakened by the mass movement of 1970 (Black Power) that was driven largely by the children and grandchildren of the PNM.
Continue reading An unforgiving electorate
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 25, 2022
A lecture given at The UWI History Fest 2022—April 20.
PART I
I have been asked to speak about the “price of progress”, which the organisers of History Fest 2022 suggested should explore some aspects of the political formations of the pre-independence Trinidad and Tobago. While I am not too sure what the price of progress was, I can try to point out a few signposts along that journey and offer a few personal reflections on them.
Continue reading The price of progress
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 04, 2022
“You may know the man by the conversation he keeps.”
—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Our 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.
Continue reading Move Satan move
By Raffique Shah
December 13, 2021
Okay, 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.
Continue reading One-half apology to Farley
By Paolo Kernahan
December 09, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
THE PNM’S rout at the hands of the fledgling People’s Democratic Patriots (PDP) in Monday’s THA elections came as quite a shock to many. The incumbent went from a six-six tie in the January poll to a 14-one annihilation.
On paper, this shouldn’t have happened. The THA was under the thrall of the PNM for more than two decades. The party prosecuted a blitzkrieg advertising campaign affording it near-ubiquity across the media. The Prime Minister is Tobagonian and freely lent his incandescent fear and fervour to the campaign.
Continue reading The Farley factor
By Raffique Shah
December 06, 2021
Wouldn’t it be… ’er, amusing if the Farley Augustine-led, Watson Duke-bred Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) canters away to win the Tobago Stakes in tomorrow’s rerun of the House of Assembly election?
The last time these two political parties met, less than one year ago, the encounter ended in a controversial six-six tie which gave Duke bragging rights, not without merit, since his brand new PDP made sweeping gains in overall votes and in the number of seats it captured. Still, they did not dislodge the wily PNM which used incumbency as an instrument to get another shot at controlling the THA, which they have held since 2001.
Continue reading Tobago’s date with fate
Express Editorial
November 15, 2021 – trinidadexpress.com
Given the Prime Minister’s statement that he had no intention of seeking an extension of the state of emergency when it came to a natural end at month-end, we, too, are taken aback by his decision to end the SoE on Wednesday, 12 days ahead if its scheduled end.
Continue reading Odd SoE decision