Guest Columns

You are cordially invited to The Daily Requiem for all victims of sexual harassment at Angostura Holdings Limited and indeed throughout Trinidad and Tobago. The chief celebrant will be Mr Terrence Bharath Chairman, Angostura Holdings Limited. In anticipation of his sermon here are two quotes from previous sermons. On July …

“Politics is a game of fear. Those that do not have the ability to frighten power elites do not succeed. “[…] The platitudes about justice, equality and democracy are just that. Only when ruling elites become worried about survival do they react. Appealing to the better nature of the powerful …

“For all our multiculturalism, we really have succumbed to the danger of our group-think single stories. For all our racial harmony and ‘diversity-in-fete’, we exist in single-story social silos which are almost always at breaking point with one myth of the other: de UNC and Kamla tief; de PNM and …

I’m a “glass half-full” kind of person, which is why I see the Petrotrin closure as an opportunity for inspired leadership on one hand, and the transformation of our people on the other. Leadership and transformation both require a willingness to change the way we see things. The behaviourists talk …

“So the logical question is: why don’t our governments fix the state enterprise governance system? The answer is partly because it sustains political patronage and corruption, partly because it buys off the trade unions, and partly because of inertia—fixing things that don’t appear to be broken simply isn’t worth the …

“Unite to move country forward,” so said our President Paula-Mae Weekes in her maiden Independence Day message; and in the midst of the closure of Petrotrin’s 100-year-old refinery in Point-a-Pierre, we have no choice but to answer the call as suggested by the President for a unified Trinidad and Tobago. …

In the lead-up to the 2015 general elections, the then Leader of the Opposition “went to bed” with the Trade Union Movement and they birthed an agreement. Post 2015, the now Prime Minister has crept away from his partners and abandoned the product of that union. Today, he is in …

Happy birthday Iere; yuh tun 56… which means yuh mature, and with maturity comes reasoning and a clearer understanding of who you are and what you still need to do to reach where you want to go. But that’s when yuh mature, not when yuh eh sure of yuhself, confused as to …

I left the oil industry in 1989 because I was impatient with the wait for the VSEP money which was rumoured to be on the way. Since then, citizens of Trinidad and Tobago knew that Trintoc/Petrotrin needed dramatic restructuring; but our politicians continued to use the company as a reward …

As with most of the population, I myself anxiously awaited the official statement from the Board of Petrotrin regarding the future of this historical and economic significant company. To say that I was shocked or taken aback by the announcement of the immediate closure of the Refinery operations and the …

On Friday August 31st we celebrate our 56th year of Independence. “How allyuh feel?” How allyuh feel we have grown since 1962 Independence and more significantly, the fact that we are getting near to our diamond anniversary—sixty years—a landmark achievement and a symbol of experience and maturity? Are we on the path …

It was bound to happen. What happened to Minister Fitzgerald Hinds in the Beetham was unfortunate, illegal and disrespectful. But it was all but inevitable, given a whole range of things including our society’s religious refusal to examine ourselves and our past and connect that to our present realities. So, …