If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, we have heard a million times, bamboozle them with bullshit. Ralph Maraj is the exemplar par excellence of that message. On the post-4pm news segment of the i95.5FM afternoon show early last week, Maraj leapt to the defence of UNC Political Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar. …
Read More »Daly Bread: Sunlight and disinfectant; it neither killed Covid nor revealed party financiers
Louis D Brandeis was a well known Justice of the US Supreme Court. In 1913, three years before his appointment, while an outspoken advocate for financial and government transparency as a means of curbing corruption, he wrote a piece in Harper’s Weekly magazine in support of the regulation of banks. …
Read More »‘Who should we trust?’ Noble confronts only question that counts for the 2020 Election
The decision as to which party or person to vote for in our General Elections is seldom a single-issue decision. It is folly when our pollsters try to imagine that we vote based on ‘what is the biggest issue confronting us now?’—since many such issues are themselves complex. In the …
Read More »Daly Bread: Is Kamla preparing to be ‘martyred loser’? Did Cabinet ignore Laventille MPs?
My principal but probably vain hope for the general election, to be held on 10 August, is that it will not polarise the country further. Realistically, one cannot hope for more and it is mamaguy to feed us dreams of unity and overcoming while our leaders are likely to engage …
Read More »MSJ: The problem with the Rio Treaty; and how gov’t, opposition and media got Venezuela imbroglio wrong
“[…] Central to this entire issue is the United States’ agenda with respect to Venezuela. If the US had not imposed sanctions on Venezuela there would be nothing for the government to explain about a visit by the vice-president of Venezuela, nothing to explain about the sale of fuel by …
Read More »Kamla: Rowley must come clean on Venezuela meeting; Rowley: ‘You are a traitor lady!’
On 27 March 2020, the Trinidad and Tobago government temporarily re-opened its borders for a meeting with a seven-member delegation from Venezuela, headed by vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, which—according to a press release—‘focused on the strategy being deployed in both countries to combat Covid-19’. However, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar suggested, in …
Read More »AG: UNC not ‘vindicated’ in Cambridge scandal; UNC: Stop using gov’t resources for PNM propaganda
“[…] In the discharge of my responsibilities as the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, in Trinidad and Tobago, I extend caution against any premature revelry at the pause in the criminal investigation into the matters involving and/or surrounding the Cambridge Analytica fiasco…” The following are press statements from …
Read More »MSJ: ‘Backward and opportunistic!’ Kamla’s UNC is acting like T&T’s ‘fifth column’
“[…] It is the view of the MSJ that the UNC’s position makes them unfit for being the government of Trinidad and Tobago since they will turn us into a semi-client state of the US. We need not state the obvious—we pass the stage when we had a governor, long …
Read More »Demming: Life after Covid-19, pandemic offers opportunity to rebuild society
Imagine the day when the minister of health announces that we have not just flattened, but broken the COVID-19 curve, and no new cases have been reported for the required number of days. For some, it will be a joyous attempt to return to life as we left it before …
Read More »Demming: Covid-19 demands leaders collaborate across party lines
Social media lights up every time Dr Michelle Trotman speaks about Covid-19, although she admits that she is not a ‘Facebook person’. The authenticity with which she delivers is endearing at a time when our officials just don’t understand how to engage the population. Dr Trotman spoke to us with …
Read More »PM condemns Persad-Bissessar for urging Ghana to ignore his energy advice
“What should be of great concern to all the decent right-thinking citizens of Trinidad and Tobago is whether there is no limit beneath which some persons not sink in their quest for political power even if it means destroying the wider national interest. “This is a serious question for the …
Read More »Noble: Is education still the path to social mobility?
In his 2007 work Categorically Unequal, sociologist Douglas Massey argues ‘education is the most important resource in today’s knowledge-based economy’. It is, therefore, not surprising to witness the passionate debate on this topic and to read the very different views of Mr Fitzgerald Hinds (Express, 2 February) and Mrs Kamla …
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