Tag Archives: politics

“[…] I want to suggest that the ‘monkeypox’ virus, which seems to have us agog at the moment, originated in Parliament—for decades home to political baboons and chimps in our country. “Whatever the host, whether the strain is/has been PNM, UNC, COP, NAR or ONR, the infected behave the same …

“[…] Do I really need a cabinet? I guess I need a team to contest the elections. But after that, I will—as I attempted to do back then—tell all of them, and especially the minister of health and the minister of sports, how to run their affairs. “And my son …

‘Send in the clowns’ is the title of a classic song written for a play launched on Broadway all the way back in 1973. I think it should have been dusted off and polished up and used as the signature tune for the play Watson Duke is making to take …

(Scene: A dapper gentleman examines a humble lodging with notable admiration.) FAR: I love the more intimate office space, boss. I can get from one end to the next far quicker than at my last office, which is bound to make me even more less-dynamic. The decor is more than …

“[…] While reading the oath of office, at the swearing-in ceremony for members of the Tobago House of Assembly on Thursday 9 December, 2021, Watson Duke uttered the words, ‘I will bear true faith and allegiance to Tobago and Trinidad’. “This is clearly not what the oath says…” The following …

Black Stalin’s lyrics in his 1988 calypso ‘We could make it if we try’  have been occupying a space in my brain. He sang: ‘So the Treasury broke and they say that recession jamming/And so to foreign countries Trinis start migrating/ They lose faith in their country, they say we …

A friend recently lamented the advantages people who live in the north of our island have over people who live in the south. My impatient response showed my disgust with these silly discussions about north v south, Indo v Afro, prestige v secondary schools, Westmoorings v Beetham and the full …

There is something poignant about what Steve Alvarez said as he walked away from politics. He had wanted ‘a new Trinidad and Tobago, one where the races unite under one political organisation to seek that which is best for our nation’. He’d built his Democratic Party of Trinidad and Tobago …

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 …

Plural societies, such as ours, are prone to tensions and to pretend that it is a new thing is folly. What is new is the disrespectful disagreement we now witness as we moved from social polarisation (living in different communities) to issue polarisation (where we cannot agree on the essentials …

“Responsibility implies a degree of maturity which recognises that there is far more long-term mileage to be gained from finding solutions and marching forward while the opposition remains mired in finger-pointing tradition.  Even if the real motivation on the campaign trail lies in the lust to win power—actions thus far …

“We support an investigation by the Commissioner of Police, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Integrity Commission, who are the appropriate persons to conduct investigations into allegations of breaches of the law. They are charged with the legal authority and responsibility for conducting fair and transparent investigations that can …