Guest Columns

In November 2016, the State filed a lawsuit against certain former public officials for alleged fraud in the HDC’s 2012 purchase of 50.5 acres at Eden Gardens in Freeport. The former officials named in that lawsuit were Jearlean John (former HDC managing director), Henckle Lall (former HDC chairman), Greg Davis …

Calling all the nation’s men! Mr Trinidadian, you have a mother, a wife, a woman, a daughter, a sister, an auntie, a nennen, a bestie, don’t you? That means there’s a woman in your life who, if she is not yet being sexually harassed, at least runs the risk of …

Domestic Violence is a little like the air around us; we know it’s there but we tend not to pay too much attention to it until some stench makes us fully aware of its existence. It may be stretching things more than a little to classify as a case of …

“Why [the] ANR Robinson [International Airport]? Why not Piarco as usual? Well, we are trying to go away from ‘business as usual.’ “We also spoke about Tobago being a location for an alternate governance if things in Trinidad go down. So we are going to test that as well and …

Arguably, Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was the greatest 20th Century African heroine of the combined struggle for the emancipation of humanity from white supremacism and the liberation of woman from patriarchal oppression. Accordingly, it is difficult to imagine a greater outpouring of tributes to any other contemporary female freedom fighter. Nevertheless, …

It is not enough to promise, as the Government of Trinidad and Tobago (GoRTT) has just done, sexual harassment legislation; legislation alone will certainly not solve the problem and not simply because in Trinidad and Tobago the effective law is what you can get away with. Between now and when …

The Guardian didn’t do a shitty thing; they did a shitty job. Fleeing from journalistic intelligence, skill and artfulness, they saw the kernel of a legitimate news story, wrapped it in cultural conformity and late afternoon testosterone, then dropped that obzocky boulder into dirty water. The splatter soiled; the shame …

In this article, I hope to show why laws must be fair, evenly applied to everyone and, most of all, respectful of human rights. Let us begin with a return to my example from Part 2. Parliament decides to legislate to the effect that 95% of your earnings is to …

As the courts came to a decision on whether to revoke the buggery law in Trinidad and Tobago, I was observing the goings-on in our beautiful two-island republic with great trepidation. And excitement. And as I also observe what is happening on the international front, I have reason to believe …

We’re all probably familiar with the stereotype trope of the hypersexual (and if male, predatory) African. Most of us have heard about—and many struggle to disavow—that racist image of African people that seems to figure most prominently in the ways they see us. Even on many porn sites (yes, I …

Carrie-Ann Moreau, who claimed to have been sexually harassed by Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs Darryl Smith, did not sue Smith but sued the State (the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs and the Chief Personnel Officer) for TT$234,360. Similarly, Bernadette Sammy, who claimed to have been sexually harassed …

The Black Power movement of the 1960’s and ‘70’s was not spawned by a spontaneous determination to destroy white supremacism and undo the psychological damage of European enslavement, colonialism and Jim Crowism. Rather, it was a much longer and more complex historical process, a process which this column is dedicated to …