When a public official who has undoubted legal power exercises that power, a question of the legitimacy of the exercise of that power can arise. Legitimacy concerns the exercise of legal power in a manner that is appropriate and justifiable and does not otherwise disturb the public conscience. Our governments …
Read More »Daly Bread: What’s taking so long for mature conversation? And what next for the panyard model?
Of course I am delighted that our new and seventh president, Her Excellency Christine Kangaloo, advocated for the panyard development model as a means of dealing with youth at risk in her inaugural address. For more than a decade, I have been advocating for the model’s recognition while describing real …
Read More »Daly Bread: Answers required for accountability in DPP imbroglio
Persons in public life frequently exercise power without accountability. As President Paula-Mae Weekes was recently demitting office, we were reminded of the fate of the merit list for the appointment of a commissioner of police that was prepared by the Police Service Commission—but which was, in August 2021, diverted from …
Read More »Noble: Gaslighting a nation; be wary of those who would use Akiel as a political weapon
Everybody knows, but nobody knows. This is the state of our politics and the conduct of some parliamentarians. In 2000, Jamaican singer, Shaggy, had a hit song, ‘It wasn’t me’, in which he denied infidelity even when there was incontrovertible proof. Only at the end, he admitted that that line …
Read More »Noble: The smartest guys in the room; will Angostura, Industrial Court and Integrity Commission pay price for hubris?
In 2001, Enron—named the ‘most innovative company ’ by Fortune magazine for six consecutive years—collapsed. Enron’s chairman and chief executive officer, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, were two arrogant and belligerent men who believed they were the ‘smartest guys in the room’. They believed that, through their sheer cleverness and …
Read More »Dear CJ: ‘[Your] unwarranted statements reflect negatively on my competence as a judge’; Gobin on Fifa ruling
“[…] I am sure that I do not need to remind you chief justice that there is more to the management of cases than fixing timetables. First instance judges often have to remind litigants and lawyers of the significance of what we do. “A judge who refuses to defer to …
Read More »What ‘embarrassment’?! TTOC president suggests how T&T’s high court and appellate court validated Wallace
“[…] If you look at the high court judgment of Madame Justice Carol Gobin and then the court of appeal, in its judgment in paragraphs 37 and 39; they are essentially saying the same thing… “So the high court and the court of appeal appeared to have validated William Wallace …
Read More »Dr Gloudon: TTFA-Fifa: an inconvenient truth that won’t be deciphered with one-dimensional thinking
“[…] The TTFA has undoubtedly been in a mess for a long time; and so has Fifa. Indeed, we may have learned how to be corrupt in football from Fifa. No one in a local or regional body can carry on sustained defrauding of Fifa without the assistance of someone …
Read More »Dear editor: There was nothing ‘pyrrhic’ about Wallace and the UTTFA’s fight, history will smile on them
“[…] The UTTFA and supporters of its stand against the mighty Fifa might also be encouraged by the words of a martyr for the cause of Poland’s Solidarity Workers in the 1980s. “Before he was brutally murdered on 19 October 1984, Father ‘Pop’ (Jerzy Popiełuszko) reportedly urged embattled workers with …
Read More »‘We shall not stand in your way’ Wallace and VPs skip TTFA EGM—but have not resigned
“[…] We remain convinced that the right to make our case, to let our voices be heard, is a basic human right. “[…] We are acutely aware that tomorrow is promised to no one of us and that it is the membership’s right to decide on the tomorrow they desire …
Read More »Fifa ‘welcomes’ T&T courts decision; Downer: TTFA in ‘constitutional limbo’
Fifa president Gianni Infantino and general secretary Fatma Samoura have spent the past six months saying that the governing football body has ‘no intention to recognise [the Trinidad and Tobago] courts’. It is a position that changed yesterday evening with the ruling of the court of appeal, which declared that …
Read More »‘A wasted trial’; how Gobin and Wallace were undone by court of appeal—as Fifa prevailed
The Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) versus the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) was billed as the most important case in local sport history, at the opening whistle. By the time the dust had cleared, though, Justice of Appeal Nolan Bereaux described the exercise as ‘a wasted trial’ …
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