In my column published on 12 July, I stated that ‘the leader of the opposition may be setting up herself for a post-election fall back role of martyred loser, if necessary’. I also wrote that the list of UNC candidates ‘was a political insurance list, packed with persons who might not …
Read More »Daly Bread: Tempting promises, moral hazards and Covid-19; how to choose at the polls?
Tomorrow’s General Election takes place at a time when the rate of spread of Covid 19 is at a high risk level, causing more worry than at any other period since the pandemic began. We simply do not know what effect uncertainty about the ominous risk of exposure to the …
Read More »Daly Bread: Sunlight and disinfectant; it neither killed Covid nor revealed party financiers
Louis D Brandeis was a well known Justice of the US Supreme Court. In 1913, three years before his appointment, while an outspoken advocate for financial and government transparency as a means of curbing corruption, he wrote a piece in Harper’s Weekly magazine in support of the regulation of banks. …
Read More »Daly Bread: Motorcade democracy—Nomination Day Carnival and the Duke of hazard
The Nomination Day exercise for the candidates, who are standing in the General Election on August 10, took place ten days ago with deejay decibels and drumming. Since then, the throwing of political ‘dus in we face’—about which I wrote last week—has continued thicker and sometimes more polluted. The mini, …
Read More »Daly Bread: Dus’ in we face—electoral tabanca and delayed hardships
Our calypsonians and other creative persons are adept at crafting imaginative interpretations of actual events. My headline this week reflects David Rudder’s portrayal in song of the breakthrough win of Exodus steel orchestra in Panorama 1992 as ‘dus in dey face’—when dust was raised on the then unpaved track to …
Read More »Daly Bread: Is Kamla preparing to be ‘martyred loser’? Did Cabinet ignore Laventille MPs?
My principal but probably vain hope for the general election, to be held on 10 August, is that it will not polarise the country further. Realistically, one cannot hope for more and it is mamaguy to feed us dreams of unity and overcoming while our leaders are likely to engage …
Read More »Daly Bread: Does minister really think Trinis would face armed police for a few dollars?
The government has called the election for 10 August, plainly in order to have it before the unrest which gripped us last week gets worse and erases the goodwill earned through the management of the Covid-19 pandemic. On Tuesday last, there was widespread unrest in or near several disadvantaged communities. …
Read More »Daly Bread: Deyalsingh and the St Joseph youth; take some more advice nuh
In the midst of a week of murder upon murder, and more police ‘ole talk’ but few arrests, Terrence Deyalsingh, the Minister of Health, gave an interview last Wednesday morning, in which he incidentally touched on not catching the persons who bring in the cocaine. The interview contained his assessment …
Read More »Daly Bread: Bounce or bounce down; how long will govt’s Covid-19 ‘high’ last?
The prejudice thing, usually ill-concealed, is more plainly visible because members and ambassadors of the privileged classes persist in making incautious statements as they feel the heat generated by the George Floyd killing in the US. However, as the soon-come General Election 2020 is taking over the top news spot, …
Read More »Daly Bread: T&T’s underlying system and its marginalising of black lives
Like citizens all over the world, I am following current events in the United States. I am sickened that persons there can take a black life without a second thought or one iota of internal moral restraint. What adds to the revulsion in the George Floyd killing is how disregard …
Read More »Daly Bread: Crapaud, millstones and talent; of Moses, Young and Lewis
The biblical Moses was hidden in the bulrushes by his mother, fearful of an edict that all male Hebrew babies were to be drowned. The bulrushes were the reeds along the banks of the river Nile. Despite his origin, Moses was saved and eventually became the person trusted to receive …
Read More »Daly Bread: The windmills of the mind; a month of spin
Why do persons in circumstances requiring full disclosure and accountability to the public invariably send us ‘in a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel, as the images unwind like the circles that you find in the windmills …
Read More »