Guest Columns

Here we go again!  In the Business Guardian of Thursday 8 April 2021, Joel Julien reports on the virtual Demas/Rampersad Seminar Series under the aegis of The UWI St Augustine Department of Economics. ‘Foreign Exchange Challenges in Trinidad and Tobago: What are the real implications?’ the title asks. Let us …

An official in another country laughed when I presented my driver’s permit because it was a simple laminated card which could be made at any print shop.  That was about 15 years ago and things have only improved slightly.   I thought of this when I received my vaccine card which …

‘Dislike of an individual is material in politics. Someone with an unlikeable persona may be unelectable in a diverse national contest… by contrast, good governance requires honest treatment of the business issues…’ (Martin Daly, November 2020). This Daly quote is relevant when considering the recent cabinet reshuffle in the light …

How does one step back from the bold misogynistic claim of being ‘The Man’s Beer’? Do you flip the script and position yourself as being anti-violence against women?   Do you attempt to engage womenfolk and position yourself as our protector by communicating repeated images of male power and strength smashing glasses …

“[…] With the declaration of the SOE on Tuesday 21 April 1970, [Makandal] Daaga and other members of the NJAC leadership, were detained on Nelson Island and at the Royal Jail.  “In the ensuing months, a reign of terror was released on the population. A dusk to dawn curfew was …

The recent utterances of a UWI economist about our economy (‘dire straits’) had me scampering for a Lloyd Best quote: ‘Palpably, we lack the pegs on which to hang ongoing events, and which would allow us to convert arbitrary detail into a systematic pattern, arithmetic into algebra, the specific into …

Womantra and 2Cents movement have both survived firestorms of social media criticism that they allegedly mishandled accusations of either sexual harassment, gender-based violence or sexual grooming perpetrated by persons in positions of leadership. Ironically, both organisations are engaged in much-needed work that can fundamentally change our cultural landscape, but they …

In a week shortened by the long Easter weekend, we ended up exhausted and battered.  While our neighbours in St Vincent contend with a raging volcano, we wreck our society. They would lose their livelihoods, and some will need to be evacuated outside of the country. We are voluntarily destroying …

Sometimes you have a memory that seems so improbable you wonder if it was a dream. I was looking at a slightly battered book that I had acquired at the Couva office of the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCB) when I had gone to see what records they had …

The opportunity provided by Covid-19 is transformational, but only if we remove the blinders of racial politics and the winner-take-all approach to developing our country, then engage a collaborative approach. Before March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the pause button on much of our activity, our systems were broken, …

The Mark Twain quote ‘facts are stubborn, statistics are flexible’ seemed appropriate last week, as the news about New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s misclassification of 9,000 Covid-19 deaths broke, shattering the carefully groomed image of his pandemic achievements as a national leader.  Cuomo, ably assisted by his aides, sought to …

“Opening the door doesn’t really change the nature of the room.” The statement made me reach for a pen so I could jot it down. I was listening via Zoom on 8 February to an online lecture given for the St Bride Library in the UK by a young Trinidadian, …