Tag Archives: corruption

After digesting Gregory Aboud’s insightful commentary in the Trinidad Express, it behooves me to offer a retort. His “Silence of The Elites” piece is chicanery masked as concern for country and changing the status quo. Aboud may genuinely believe that he is offering a compelling and emphatic critique of his …

This column was one of the first among regular commentaries to identify that Government slackness was embracing criminality, and to make dire predictions about where this would lead. The assertion was met with dismay on the cocktail circuit. A well regarded commentator suggested to me that our governments were ‘mooks’ …

“A prominent political scientist devoted newspaper and academic articles to illustrating the UNC as corrupt and also darkly suggested an ethnic propensity to white-collar crime. He wrote: ‘For the UNC, politics is relative; everything is for relatives.’ “The party of all-ah-we-t’ief, Johnny O’Halloran and which spawned corruption-buster Gene Miles, had taken …

When the 6.9 magnitude earthquake hit in mid-August this year, many were in shock; some even thought it was the end. Warnings of raging tropical storms/hurricanes largely go unnoticed in sweet T&T. Instead, we bring out the rum, puncheon and babash. Recall the road to Manzanilla was cut off not …

“The workers must not however be the only or even the first victims of the collapse and closure of the refinery. “We, the taxpayers need reassurance that the architects of this financial disaster are made to pay a price commensurate with the scale of their failures—be they directors or Cabinet …

It has now been more than a week since it was announced publicly that Petrotrin’s refinery would be closed down. We have been bombarded by information which can be classified as facts, alternative facts and outright fake news. Interpretation of this information has been shrouded in hues of red and …

A year or two before former Prime Minister Patrick Manning passed away, I wrote an article stating—among many other things—that Manning no longer held any relevance for politics in Trinidad and Tobago. Of course multiple queries followed from readers. I did not explain myself then as I found the statement …

When Abraham Lincoln said that you could not fool all of the people all of the time, he could not have known that information technology would come to bear heavily on both the ability (fake news) and inability (investigative reporting) of the powerful to fool the people. Lincoln would be …

Ex-Defence Force star Josimar Belgrave is one of two former soldiers who were charged with a combined 162 fraud and corruption matters in the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court yesterday. Belgrave, a private, and Jason Richards, a lance corporal, were accused of stealing TT$1.4 million from the State by fraudulent means between …

Fifteen years ago, shortly before becoming a columnist—as a guest speaker at an event organised by the late Lloyd Best—I characterised our political contests as a fight for the national cash register. I also asserted that in politics you can lawfully t’ief, based on the way the State enterprise system …

It is Day Seven of Hurricane A&V: a low pressure weather system which has struck Trinidad and Tobago with little warning and savage repercussions after Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar read from a leaked Petrotrin audit report. In its wake, Mr Live Wire reports, is mayhem and confusion: Tanty Kamla fraid …

Monday was the anniversary of that infamous jailbreak, two years ago, and I should originally have submitted this piece to be published on that day. But I think that it’s better if it appears today, between that 24 July anniversary and the anniversary of another infamous episode in this country’s …