By Raffique Shah
July 04, 2019
There is a song, a beautiful song in lyrics, melody and its first recorded rendition, that has been the anthem of successive generations that grew older—over 50, over 60, take your pick. It is an ode to nostalgia, but more than that it celebrates youth even as it warns the young that growing old has its challenges, an inevitability that we must all face.
Continue reading Those were the days my friend…
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 04, 2019
My article last week, “The Labyrinthine World of Doublethink,” must have touched a nerve. I received comments, some good, and some bad, from a wide array of people. This suggests that I was not understood entirely or that many interpretations could be taken from my article.
Any time a writer has to explain his work it means that he has not been as clear as he should have been. It’s a difficult task to convey what he believes to be true when his medium requires the use of language whose nature can be elusive. It’s always a struggle to get it right.
Continue reading The Search for Truth
By Raffique Shah
July 01, 2019
I feel a sense of déjà vu, of having been there, seen that, whenever some self-proclaimed leader or obscure group announces the formation of a new political party—which seems to be a frequent occurrence, with three major elections looming large on the horizon. While this is merely democracy at work, citizens exercising their right to run for political office, too many fools are rushing into a maelstrom that wise men avoid like the proverbial plague.
Continue reading Fools rush in
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 27, 2019
Paul Leacock wept bitter tears. The party to which he has given his life shamed him publicly in the only space where he knew he could seek answers to the problems that arose in his official duties: PNM’s General Council.
On June 15 at PNM’s General Council meeting he asked for guidance in a matter in which his corporation, the Tunapuna-Piarco Regional Corporation, had exceeded its authorized expenditure. Leacock is the chairman of the Tunapuna-Piarco Regional Corporation.
Continue reading The Labyrinthine World of Doublethink
By Raffique Shah
June 21, 2019
During the recent Venezuelan migrants registration exercise, I found myself subconsciously scanning video-clips and photographs of the hundreds of hopefuls who turned up at the three designated centres each day for, I am not ashamed to admit it, applicants of colour. “Where are the Waraos?” I kept asking aloud. “Where are the Afro-Venezuelans?” I spotted one or two of the latter during the two-week exercise, but not one of the indigenous people (Warao and other tribes), who, I am told by fisher-folks who routinely make trips across to the Main”, live closest to Trinidad and Tobago.
Continue reading Crisis next door will continue
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 20, 2019
Almost invariably citizens elect a government with the expectation that it will act in their best interest. You allow them (the members of government) to go along their merry way with the tacit assumption that they realize their primary function is to serve rather than to be served; to listen and to respond rather than to impose and to dictate.
Continue reading The Public’s Right to Know
By Raffique Shah
June 14, 2019
Trinidad and Tobago should be grateful for having among its citizens patriots who are unafraid to speak out on issues that affect us all, and more importantly, who bear allegiance to the country, not to any political party. Of course, such persons have the right to support a party of their choice at any point in time. But they also jealously maintain their independence by criticising the policies and actions of the party they voted for when they are convinced it has made decisions that are inimical to the best interests of the nation.
Continue reading Identifying and fighting economic apartheid
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 12, 2019
“If there is a miracle in the idea of life, it is this: that we are able to exist for a time, in defiance of chaos.”
—Binyavanga Wainaina, One Day I Will Write About This Place
Few people in Trinidad and Tobago may have heard the name Binyavanga Wainaina, the Kenyan writer and activist, who died on May 29 at the age of 48. He was one of the most prominent international writers of his time who “above all, sought the truth of complexity” (Financial Times, June 1). In 2014, Time Magazine named him one of the “100 most influential people in the world.”
Continue reading “I Am a Homosexual, Mum”
By Raffique Shah
June 06, 2019
Two crews, one from the URP and the other from the CEPEP, descended upon the two-by-two street on which I live during the past two weeks in a kind of pincer attack that I am convinced was devised by mid-level officials of the programmes to show citizen Shah how taxpayers’ dollars are wasted, and how we can do nothing about the wastage.
An in-my-face kind of gesture, probably with the finger…
Continue reading Look into the mirror, people
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 06, 2019
The Tacarigua Welfare and Improvement Council, also known as the Tacarigua Village Council, was established on 23 May 1945. Its first meeting was held at the “Cocoa House” that was built by enslaved Africans in 1837. Vernon Scott, the headmaster of St. Mary’s Anglican School and the person under whom I began my teaching career, was the first president of the Council.
Continue reading Land Grabbing with Government’s Assistance