Guest Columns

The new Government deserves time to settle in. Dr Keith Rowley is a first time Prime Minister, he is leading a team of wide-eyed inexperience and it has been a long, tense campaign getting here; we are all tired and bruised. Alas, after eight years of Patrick Manning and Company …

It feels like a morning for poetry. Cool as rain, cutting as razor. Poetry that syncs with the soul, tempered by mood and tailored to taste. After the extended bout of political excess, this morning-before is thirsty for the clarity of Art’s truth as prescription for hangover. Perhaps you, too, …

So the Extempo King has fallen victim to the extempo politics of an extempo party—and he’s vex? Really? Winston “Gypsy” Peters should know that he can’t play mas and ‘fraid powder. He has been lucky to enjoy five years on the biggest extempo stage in the land and now that …

Less than eight months after Kamla Persad-Bissessar and the People’s Partnership skilfully navigated the crest of a high wave in a sea of yellow and assumed governance of a nation, the name Reshmi Ramnarine entered the national vocabulary. The PP government was elected on May 24, 2010. News of Ramnarine’s …

Former NAR Minister Lincoln Myers pens an open letter to Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister and UNC Political Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar: Dear Madam Prime Minister, It should come as no surprise that, with the 2015 election campaign approaching its crescendo, I am taking this opportunity to publicly express my view …

Columnist Sunity Maharaj considers the value offered by political manifestos to the electorate; and how the public might better utilise policy documents for better governance: With just two weeks to go to the election, there is not much that can be done with recently released party manifestos, apart from oooh-ing and aaah-ing, …

Voters looking to support the prime minister on September 7th might be astonished to discover that there is no party listed as “Kamla” on the ballot paper.  Given the huge investment in marketing “Kamla”, a voter should be forgiven for assuming that “Kamla” was the newest party in town. Imagine …

Raheema Sayyid-Andrews offers another instalment in the continuing story of being in love even after marriage: You are standing in front of the closet in your underwear, mentally cursing at those phantom five pounds, the five pounds that you can feel and everyone else can see, and shaking your head …

Budding author Raheema Sayyid-Andrews looks in on a chilly night in lover’s lane: She stares at the wall. It was not in appreciation of the creamy peach paint or the painting that graced it, although she had recently heard that the artist was raking in some serious dough now. She …

In part two of this two-part series, Fuad Abu Bakr, political leader of the New National Vision (NNV), responds to suggestions that he has no business in politics because of his father Yasin Abu Bakr’s history and gives the NNV’s position on same-sex relationships and marriage and campaign financing. Abu …

Fuad Abu Bakr, political leader of the New National Vision (NNV), accuses the Government of using his father and Jamaat-al-Muslimeen Imam Yasin Abu Bakr as a scapegoat, reveals why he clashed with the Imam over the 1990 Commission of Enquiry and explains why the NNV is not a Muslim party, …

Former Jamaat-al-Muslimeen lieutenant Lancelot Small offers a wandering, indirect defence for himself, his brother and detained Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, who was held for questioning in relation to slain attorney Dana Seetahal: They are at it again. In 1990, the ANR Robinson Administration drove the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen to the point of …