The new Government deserves time to settle in. Dr Keith Rowley is a first time Prime Minister, he is leading a team of wide-eyed inexperience and it has been a long, tense campaign getting here; we are all tired and bruised. Alas, after eight years of Patrick Manning and Company …
Read More »Mistah Shak: Why I’m not fully satisfied despite PNM’s electoral victory…
PHEW! FINALLY JAH! This period of electoral campaigning, which most certainly overstayed its welcome, has finally reached its conclusion! So we will now have a new Government which will be formed by Dr Keith Rowley and the PNM, having defeated the UNC/PP 23-18. This is a victory and a change …
Read More »T&T has a new PM! Rowley takes over town; Kamla shuts down
Taxi for Kamla Persad-Bissessar! In the end, it transpired that Trinidad and Tobago was not the only thing that the UNC political leader had not been properly servicing. After a less than gracious concession speech, the Siparia MP hopped into “PM1”, only for the vehicle to refuse to budge. Who …
Read More »PNM or People’s Partnership? Live Wire gives his final word before September 7
Scene: A haggard figure knocks firmly on a white, wooden door and then sits on the step to catch his breath. Suddenly, the door swings open and sends the visitor catspraddling into a parked car. A mystical figure emerges from behind the door… Patriot (shaken): Mr Live Wire, I presume? Live …
Read More »Making Sense of Manifestos; Sunity considers value of policy documents
Columnist Sunity Maharaj considers the value offered by political manifestos to the electorate; and how the public might better utilise policy documents for better governance: With just two weeks to go to the election, there is not much that can be done with recently released party manifestos, apart from oooh-ing and aaah-ing, …
Read More »Honeypot Rottweiler and Hindu/Krystian PM; Bas and Patos talk Elections 2015
Scene: Residence of former Prime Minister Patrick Manning. His old Parliamentary colleague, fellow Presentation College, San Fernando alumni and ex-Prime Minister Basdeo Panday takes a seat. Patrick Manning: What would you like to drink old friend? Basdeo Panday: Ahmm… Gimme a Carib there, old man. Ahmm… Stiff and cold like …
Read More »Fuad Abu Bakr: The Jamaat is stronger than ever, politically
In part two of this two-part series, Fuad Abu Bakr, political leader of the New National Vision (NNV), responds to suggestions that he has no business in politics because of his father Yasin Abu Bakr’s history and gives the NNV’s position on same-sex relationships and marriage and campaign financing. Abu …
Read More »PNM treasurer praises FIFA “mafia”; will the Rottweiler bite back?
PNM treasurer and Port of Spain Mayor Raymond Tim Kee continued his alleged double-life as a “mafia man” today when he figuratively kissed the ring of his professed godfather and FIFA president, Sepp Blatter. Well, that is what Opposition Leader Keith Rowley thinks anyway. “I knew long ago that FIFA …
Read More »Vote in, vote out, repeat: T&T electorate’s recurring nightmare
HL MENCKEN suggests that “under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.” I could find no quote more discomforting in its truth about the situation here in Trinidad and Tobago. There …
Read More »Party gone! Colm leads PNM conga line out of Parliament
It was the biggest and best coordinated mass evacuation of a Trinidad venue since Machel Montano finished singing “Like a Boss” at the 2015 Soca Monarch final. If the next General Election does not go as planned, PNM MP Colm Imbert could at least look forward to a future with …
Read More »Kyat fight! Rowley sinks his teeth into fresh controversy
Well, Sport Minister Brent Sancho is not the only fellah in Cabinet who knows what it is like to score an own goal. Then again, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has hired so many own goal specialists that the People’s Partnership Government should probably be investigated for match fixing. All the same, …
Read More »You ain’t seen nothing yet: Braithwaite previews 2015 ‘Battle of the Treasury’
At the height of the Chaguanas West by-election last year, I wrote an article titled “Sinking in the mud” which highlighted the low level of campaigning and the depths to which some candidates sank in order to win votes. I wrote at the time “the rhetoric from the various campaigns …
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