Martin Daly

Anthony Bourdain is a chef, a food and travel writer and television personality. He has significant credibility evidenced by his winning a Peabody award and several Emmys. Our country was recently the subject of an episode of Bourdain’s well-known television series Parts Unknown. Its broadcast has stirred controversy among a …

It is difficult to move away from the current controversies swirling around the judiciary. With the revelation, last Sunday, of Mrs Marcia Ayers-Caesar’s version of what took place between her and the Chief Justice regarding unfinished cases—part-heard matters—the plot has thickened. It is now common ground that on the evening …

In relation to the huge Marcia mess created by the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC), there is no need to explain again the critical difference between the powers vested by law to deal with errant public officials and the complementary role of public opinion. Robust public opinion encourages accountability …

On Thursday last, by a vote of nearly 2 to 1 in the case of each resolution, the members of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago, (LATT) the governing body for lawyers, declared their loss of confidence in the Chief Justice. By a similar margin, it dealt with the …

Just two Sundays ago, I discussed the inability of our public officials to beg our pardon when they blunder. They show contempt for our intelligence and our own experience when they spin improbable explanations for obvious blundering. The Government has had a very bad fortnight of blunders and ‘no beg-pardons.’ …

The furore arising from the appointment as a High Court judge, subsequent resignation and the purported “restoration” of Mrs Marcia Ayers-Caesar, the former Chief Magistrate, as a magistrate has not died down. However, as the story emerges, public opinion now contains feelings of mercy for Mrs Marcia Ayers-Caesar. I am …

My deceased mother, Celia, had a number of priceless expressions.  Many of them applied to persons who got “too big for their boots.” Getting too big for your own boots could be a gradual process. When it happened overnight she discerned that it was an immediate attack of “position-itis”—a condition …

The Judicial and Legal Services Commission (JLSC) blundered when it appointed Mrs Marcia Ayers-Caesar to the office of a Judge of the High Court. At the time of the JLSC’s decision to appoint her, Mrs Ayers-Caesar was the Chief Magistrate and had a list of unfinished cases before her. One …

The current Government has fatally underestimated the resistance to the proposed property tax. If it does not make concessions on the methodology of its introduction and of its implementation, the property tax will become a poll tax when it leads to defeat at the polls. Of course, much of the …

The latest round of appointments to the High Court bench and the ensuing fiasco raises the urgent need to find a constitutional mechanism to hold the Judicial and Legal Service Commission accountable. Steps must be taken with a far less leisurely timetable than the one recently suggested by the Law …

The gathering storm is a Churchill phrase. Winston Churchill used it as the title for the first volume of his massive six-volume history of World War Two. The historical account is given from his perspective as a discredited politician who saw that Germany would re-arm and go to war but …

The public has long ago figured out, but not accepted, that the police cannot catch anybody for murder except for some obvious domestic violence assailants and small fry. Even then, there is ground for suspicion that the small fry are taking the fall for bigger accomplices or for those covering …