Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) party organiser Akins Vidale makes a case for the Trade Union Movement (TUM) to be seen as a viable political third party: The pats on the back have been too many to count since the 2013 Local Government National Debate. However, on too many occasions, …
Read More »Vote in, vote out, repeat: T&T electorate’s recurring nightmare
HL MENCKEN suggests that “under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.” I could find no quote more discomforting in its truth about the situation here in Trinidad and Tobago. There …
Read More »Doctor, my goldfish has epilepsy: The problem with T&T Governance
I had been considering several topics to write on and then inspiration (if I can call it that) came by the way of an ill-conceived attempt to stir my sense of humour. The message on my phone read as follows: I phoned the vet the other day and said, “I …
Read More »Cry havoc: Beware Persad-Bissessar’s war for peace
In my last blog, published on 5 June 2014, I suggested that our political situation was not unlike George Orwell’s Oceania, which was the fictitious setting for his timeless novel, “1984”. On 11 June 2014, within a week of my post, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar declared that we must “unleash …
Read More »Well, well Orwell: Is T&T drifting towards “1984”?
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” – 1984, George Orwell I was probably 15 years old when I first read George Orwell’s 1984. At the time I had only conceived of Winston Smith’s dilemma as doing the right thing because …
Read More »