Guest Columns

Andre Tanker orchestrates—there is no better word—perfect harmony between musical movements and plot movements. Key to that harmony is the articulation of a fusion that proved a prophetic precursor to the diversity of musical forms taken for granted in Trinidad today. At a time when ‘Trinidad music’ meant almost exclusively …

“Revisiting Bim four and a half decades later, thanks to the 40th Anniversary Film and Music Pack, I find the film’s imperfections all the more endearing, its shortcomings charming. Perfection in any home-grown Trinidad film product back then would have been out of sync with place and context; it remains …

“Doudou!” “Darling! “Darkie!” “Red ting!” “Sweet ting! “Slim ting!” “Tick ting!” “Tall ting!” Their catcalls come at us from all sides, across the street, across the room, in the Stadium, in the Oval, in City Gate, at the taxi-stand, everywhere. Their candid remarks about our bodies are delivered without hesitation, …

“The royal wedding is in itself an urgent reminder of the need for reparations. The extravagant lifestyles of the monarchic family draw upon ill-gotten gains that have their roots in slavery. The opulent wedding ceremony was also no doubt connected to wealth that came from the subjugation of black and …

“The vast and overcrowded peninsula of India […] is in its native condition most miserable and no better in a moral point of view, as exhibited in the picture which Sir Emerson Tennet draws of the Tamils of Ceylon: ‘[…] Sensuality and gain are the two passions of their existence, …

Congratulations are in order for the Minister of Labour, Senator Jennifer Baptiste-Primus, on becoming the first Trinbagonian woman to stand up and be counted in the #MeToo epidemic! The good Minister took the brave step of announcing in a Sunday Express article that she too had been a victim of …

What is a right? Rights are such a fundamental thing; everybody has them and governments and courts and other powers-that-be are constrained to respect them. It certainly is not unusual to hear people declare vehemently, “That is my right!” Also commonplace is “I have the right to [insert comment of …

In November 2016, the State filed a lawsuit against certain former public officials for alleged fraud in the HDC’s 2012 purchase of 50.5 acres at Eden Gardens in Freeport. The former officials named in that lawsuit were Jearlean John (former HDC managing director), Henckle Lall (former HDC chairman), Greg Davis …

Calling all the nation’s men! Mr Trinidadian, you have a mother, a wife, a woman, a daughter, a sister, an auntie, a nennen, a bestie, don’t you? That means there’s a woman in your life who, if she is not yet being sexually harassed, at least runs the risk of …

Domestic Violence is a little like the air around us; we know it’s there but we tend not to pay too much attention to it until some stench makes us fully aware of its existence. It may be stretching things more than a little to classify as a case of …

“Why [the] ANR Robinson [International Airport]? Why not Piarco as usual? Well, we are trying to go away from ‘business as usual.’ “We also spoke about Tobago being a location for an alternate governance if things in Trinidad go down. So we are going to test that as well and …

Arguably, Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was the greatest 20th Century African heroine of the combined struggle for the emancipation of humanity from white supremacism and the liberation of woman from patriarchal oppression. Accordingly, it is difficult to imagine a greater outpouring of tributes to any other contemporary female freedom fighter. Nevertheless, …