View Point

“When your neighbour’s house is on fire, wet yours!” is an excellent Trinidadian proverb applicable now. We have been consumed with the goings-on about succession planning cum election preparation in the People’s National Movement. Not forgotten is the troubles of the Dissident Five, who have been sidelined after the United …

A second volume of The Daly Commentaries—a selection of these weekly columns from 2016-2023, picking up from my first volume covering 2002 to 2015—has been published. Information about its release concludes this column. During my twenty-two plus years as a columnist, I have had the unstinting support of the Express …

“[…] Dr Selwyn Cudjoe’s obsession with the PNM leader seems to have completely obfuscated his ability to be balanced and fair in his writing. “[…] He never once engaged the point that Dr Keith Rowley was making when he referred to the Opposition as unpatriotic louts—in relation to their discourteous …

I have examined the surprise announcement that the People’s National Movement (PNM) convention and internal election scheduled for November 17 had been cancelled and the further announcement swiftly, but ambiguously, walking back the cancellation decision. My view remains that any apparent suppression of democracy within the PNM is a matter …

Shorty would be able to blame any negative feedback from Severe Licking on Baron. Or his informants, Bomber and Cypher. Gypsy’s troubles, however, are of his own making—in more than one sense! In his 1972 For Cane, the Little Black Boy singer complained that Ah really doh know how to …

Calypso has given us a handful of unforgettable female figures. There is, for example, Kitchener’s Flag Woman and Scrunter’s Woman on the Base, there is David Rudder’s Bahia Girl and Sparrow’s Winer Girl from Princes Town. Not one of those four has a name. But the women I want to …

Dr Eric Williams set the standard for the practice of party politics by the People’s National Movement (PNM), which he founded in 1956. As political leader of the PNM, after successive PNM general election victories, Dr Williams took office in 1962 as the first prime minister of independent Trinidad and …

Only a complete ignoramus! Or the kind of blindness that will not see! Tell me, how could even one person in Trinidad and Tobago actually entertain the thought that Aldwyn “Kitchener” Roberts might have been capable of such an abomination? Oh, what a country! In the days when Guy Harewood …

“Foodstuffs have a shortage daily, business places burning in the city/ Before they watch these things seriously, the whole meeting is a comedy/ “Ridicule —- fatigue giving, and all of the members laughing/While they having a good time, we catching we royal behind.” Explainer, Kicksin in Parliament (1979). It was …

The People’s National Movement (the PNM) tersely announced last week: “The People’s National Movement wishes to advise that its 51st Annual Convention, as well as the internal election, originally scheduled for Sunday 17 November 2024, has been cancelled.” The PNM is currently the party in government having been elected for …

Emceeing the Revue Calypso Tent’s show in 1972, night after night, the Mighty Stalin introduced Kelvin Pope in the same way: “So, ladies and gentlemen, here without further ado is that four-king four-cup four car Duke.” Famously, of course, over the four years immediately preceding ’72, the Mighty Duke had …

What do the 1937 riots, the 1970 Black Power revolution, the 1990 attempted coup, and the current crime wave have in common? They are all eruptions of dissatisfaction over the distribution of the national income earned from our energy sector. We will continue to have these episodes until we reset …