Tag Archives: Patrick Manning

“[…] For many decades, T&T’s highly productive energy sector funded disproportionately high standards of living in its non-energy sectors, including the public service. However, production in the energy sector has been in decline since 2010, masked temporarily by extraordinary recent increases in energy prices.  “[…] In such difficult circumstances, governments …

Gabriel Faria, the past CEO of the leading local business chamber, had an insightful interview in this week’s Business Express. He discussed the formation of a new business advocacy group. He quoted a Dr Terrence Farrell 2011 article on the need for responsible elites in our society while admitting that …

Dear Prime Minister, When you speak, I listen like many others young and old, we all listen closely. If we miss your message, we go to social media and that is where I found a shocking clip from a recent News Conference on Anslem Gibbs’ Twitter feed of 3 December …

Within the last two years, the world has had two pivotal moments: the arrival of Covid-19 and the development of the vaccine. The virus started small but has taken lives and wrecked economies, changing the way we live forever.  Even though ‘Operation Warp Speed’ delivered vaccines way ahead of schedule …

The drama surrounding the contract of the Commissioner of Police reveals our nation’s values, tests the strength of the commitment we make to our institutions, and shapes the character of our country.  We take our democracy for granted and point to the 1990 attempted coup as a sure sign of …

That’s insulting! The National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) is of the view that Dr Keith Rowley deserves to have the words of the first of his three non-PNM predecessors, Basdeo Panday, thrown at him. And they are calling on the current prime minister to ‘do the honourable thing’ and apologise …

“Every politician who has tasted power, and many who counted for little, has gone to war with the media. If they didn’t, that would signal that journalists were not doing their jobs, that they were too busy prostrating to power to do their duty to country.” Raffique Shah, 30 March …

“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 …

Like most of Trinidad and Tobago, I am not looking forward to the upcoming election (a.k.a. silly) season with the current offerings. The PNM and the UNC or its derivatives have ruled this country since independence and the problems of underdevelopment persist. Citizens need to escape the never-ending abusive cycle …

Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley made a chilling, although realistic, admission about murder in our country and its clear and present danger at all times and in every place. The prime minister was commenting on the murder and robbery at a Tobago supermarket in which a security …

I was finishing last week’s column about the unrelenting grip in which murderous crime holds our country when I read our Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley’s plaintive cry: “What have we become?” Dr Rowley was mourning the reportedly gruesome murders of a life long Tobagonian friend and his wife of …

“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 …