Tag Archives: Martin Daly

The annual reading of the Budget is a ritual. It is real only in that it determines what will be the cost of living in the short and medium term.  This year it imposed additional taxes intended to replace evaporated energy sector revenue in order to prop up a lifestyle, …

Dominica, I am sorry. I choose to say that in the patois of the headline of this column, consistent with the linguistic expression of Dominica’s national motto: Après Bondi, C’est la Ter—After God, it’s the Earth. Now, after Hurricane Maria, Dominica’s beloved Earth is a debris dump—its fertility disrespected by …

One thing that is more fake than fake news is VVIP status in Trinidad and Tobago—but sadly we pay out of the Treasury for the political and social botox that supports the fake status. Within the past fortnight, five Caribbean islands have been devastated and half a dozen others have …

Fifteen years ago, shortly before becoming a columnist—as a guest speaker at an event organised by the late Lloyd Best—I characterised our political contests as a fight for the national cash register. I also asserted that in politics you can lawfully t’ief, based on the way the State enterprise system …

I wrote this column sitting adjacent to Mayaro beach enjoying a slice of the August holidays. It is about two hours  to sunset on as glorious a day as it gets in this piece of paradise. A little earlier in the day I had—unusually for me—a daytime snooze, on the …

“You’re going to love me,” she sang, raw emotion inhabiting but not inhibiting her voice. And the crowd roared. “She” is Arielle Cowie, the passionate young singer who performed with Renegades at last month’s International Steelband Foundation’s BIG 5 concert. And she was right; I loved her. As did, as …

One of the pillars of the administration of justice is the principle that open justice is fundamental to the rule of law and democratic accountability. That principle reaches its highest expression in judicial review cases and constitutional motions. The whole purpose of such cases is to put the processes by …

The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition seemed to agree at their meeting on Tuesday last that there could not be any constitutionally sound legislative solution to the crisis, which the Judicial and Legal Service Commission (JLSC) created as a result of its bungled appointment and the subsequent …

In the face of rampant violent crime, last week’s column asserted that it is wholly insufficient to believe, as the Government does, that we could merely rely on the Police Service as currently managed. On that same day, there was a forceful editorial in the Sunday Express newspaper which I …

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 …