Cabinet members Stuart Young, Clarence Rambharat and Marvin Gonzalez are to be commended for taking a public stand on legislation regarding the sale and use of fireworks—in disagreement with the proposed legislation with which the Attorney General is taking centre-stage. The AG has again gone out on a limb, unaccompanied …

The People’s National Movement (PNM) campaigned obsessively in the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) elections  on the issue of the suitability of Watson Duke for office, and lost comprehensively.   Days later, it began trying to discredit the winning party by reference to Duke’s alleged conflicts of interest. The court …

We begin 2022 in the midst of times of intense uncertainty, at least equal to that of wartime but probably bigger because every country in the world is simultaneously a theatre of upheaval. Moreover, the uncertainty is not just a generalised one about the future; it is an uncertainty about …

Farley Augustine and the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) have interrupted the alarming descent of Trinidad and Tobago into an authoritarian one-party state and I thank them for that. Having comprehensively routed the incumbent People’s National Movement (PNM) in the Tobago House of Assembly elections, in the backyard of its leader …

Nearly three months ago, in a column published on 5 September, I called on the Government to consider legislative options in the face of the Delta variant threat. I wrote as follows: ‘Given the low rate of vaccination, our population is wide open to death or hospitalisation from the Delta …

George Washington Carver was born into conditions of slavery but nevertheless became a prominent agricultural scientist and innovator in crop farming. I mention him in the context of our leaders masking reality with excuses.   Carver stated his view in a single sentence: ‘Ninety-nine per cent of failures come from …

‘[…] Given the low rate of vaccination, our population is wide open to death or hospitalisation from the Delta variant…’ That was bluntly stated in my column of 5 September, ten weeks ago, with the foresight that the Government would helplessly wait around—self-praise tying up its brain, while its bouffes …

As a result of the stated ambition of big business to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 or before, Trinidad and Tobago is not the only country that will have to look for a living other than in the exploration, production and sale of oil and natural gas and …

Two weeks ago, the President of the Republic in her words ‘spoke to the issue of the substantive appointment of commissioner of police’ and confirmed that ‘an order of merit list was delivered on 11 August 2021 to the OTP and withdrawn almost immediately’. OTP is a reference to the …

Many readers will recall the political controversies in which President Anthony Carmona, the immediate predecessor of our current president, was involved—arising out of the purported exercise of powers that he thought he had. As a result, citizens hoped that the presidency would return to calmer waters, not made turbulent by …

Who aborted the process for the appointment of a substantive commissioner of police and why? Is the unprecedented situation of the top leadership positions in the Police Service now being vacant the outcome of the President’s acts and omissions concerning the merit list which the Police Service Commission had settled, …

Recent reference has been made to the Prime Minister’s constitutional duty to keep the President of the Republic informed of the state of affairs in Trinidad and Tobago in purported answer to public concern about an alleged meeting between an unnamed public official and the then Chair of the Police …