The drama surrounding the contract of the Commissioner of Police reveals our nation’s values, tests the strength of the commitment we make to our institutions, and shapes the character of our country.  We take our democracy for granted and point to the 1990 attempted coup as a sure sign of …

‘Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.’ These words of Nelson Mandela should resonate as we approach our upcoming budget debate. A national budget is more than an economic forecast; it is a declaration about …

One of my saddest memories is of something that happened in 2015 at a village perched high overlooking Port-of-Spain. This village was once a place of joy, where citizens from all over the country flocked to watch the annual fireworks in the Queen’s Park Savannah.  However, a nationally infamous gang …

I am not a professional teacher. But I enjoy teaching and have been leading a group of pre-teens in an under-privileged area (what Bishop Harvey called ‘the belly of the whale’) for the last few years.  In the light of the debate about school reopening and the announcement of the …

Trinidad and Tobago did not buy ‘cat in bag’ when we hired Mr Gary Griffith. We knew full well what to expect.  In October 2015, then Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon reported on his predecessor’s bid to purchase armoured vehicles for the police service:  ‘Unknown to the PS and …

There was an advertising slogan, ‘You’ve come a long way, Baby!’, in the late 60s that reflected the rising empowerment of women. By the early 80s, a board including two men, inspired by Radhica Saith, ran the first local Halfway House for Battered Women.  Thirty years ago, this week, our …

The Covid-19 pandemic hit our shores at the wrong time. Indeed, there is no right time, but the state of our nation had made us incredibly vulnerable.  We were in a crisis, adjusting to the economic woes and experiencing lowered trust levels in our leaders. In the heat of Covid-19, …

Reading is dangerous; it can lead you to challenge things around you in unexpected but exciting ways. Or it can lead to a severe state of the blahs!  One expects those anointed by the mass media to use their time and space to provide insights, moving their readers to actions …

Nobody goes on a second date if, on the first one, they got slapped around. The woman (it is more often a woman) does not realise that they are in an abusive relationship until it is late.  The abuser sets the honey trap, seducing the unsuspecting victim into believing that …

There is a story about a Samaritan called ‘good’ in the Bible because he did not walk by a suffering Jew. He had no prior relationship with the man lying beaten on the roadside, who was not part of his community, yet he acted out of compassion. Giving up his …

Last Sunday, the state of our national dialogue alarmed two Express columnists. Martin Daly described it as poisonous (‘The country has descended almost exclusively into the practice of the poisonous politics of demonisation.’) while Selwyn Cudjoe warned about the consequences (‘I don’t know how the acidic squabble between the prime …

In 2016, our country was the western world’s highest per capita supplier of recruits for the ISIS campaign in the Middle East. We are among the world’s most violent nations, with an average annual murder rate of 32.9 per 100,000 inhabitants(from 2009–2018). Refugees and trafficking complicate our lives. These trends …