“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 …
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 »Demming: Time to vote for newbie politicians; T&T leaders fail to get things done
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 …
Read More »Daly Bread: 25 years of making excuses: the state repeatedly fails to punish and prevent murder
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 …
Read More »Daly Bread: How did we become this murderous society?
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 …
Read More »Dear Editor: Is ‘UNC corruption’ largely a PNM sales gimmick to derail debate?
“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 …
Read More »Media Monitor: Maraj and Maharaj tell why we jamming the criminals but we still in a jam
“Why should people be sacrificed so as to allow others, wrongdoers, to prosper? That is what we are being called upon to do, colleagues, […] What we are being called upon to do by a small clique of people in the country is to support wrongdoing, pretend not to know …
Read More »Daly Bread: Petrotrin is epicentre of socio-economic earthquake; T&T won’t escape reverberations
At least 1,700 workers are reportedly about to lose their jobs at Petrotrin without reprieve because the money-losing oil refinery at Pointe a Pierre is being shutdown. These workers recently had the benefit of an interim five per cent pay rise conceded in response to strike notice given in January …
Read More »Dear Editor: Who is really responsible for Petrotrin?! Khan, Rowley and Imbert have dirty hands
“One would swear that [Franklin] Khan’s government had just come into office and didn’t have a clue as to what is going on; that Petrotrin was some runaway horse whose directors and management did what they wanted. “[…] All of these projects were started during the chairmanship of Malcolm Jones, …
Read More »Nakhid: On politics and football; why Manning was irrelevant and Deschamps is a failure
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 …
Read More »Daly Bread: Runaway violent crime is the predictable outcome of political indifference
Anyone with a copy of The Daly Commentaries or a good memory will know that these columns have repeatedly condemned the dreadful expression “collateral damage”. On Monday last, that phrase was disparaged in an editorial in this newspaper entitled “Crossing the 200-murder mark.” Unfortunately, it is “more than a few …
Read More »Dear Editor: Kamal Persad wrong to ignore PNM’s history with citizens of Indian descent
“From the inception of the party under the leadership of Dr Eric Williams, the PNM […] could not have succeeded without the important role played by citizens of Indian descent who were either members of the PNM or citizens who put country first in their respective roles. “It was people …
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