Tag Archives: Raffique Shah

“[…] Mr Raffique Shah admired Paris students protesting fuel prices and the poor conditions of schools in their poorer districts… He granted French youth a structural explanation for their law-breaking, then refused to recognize the structural reason for that mother on a mattress on the floor locally. “[…] At home, …

Last week, we marked the tenth anniversary of Dana Seetahal’s murder. Justifiably, her family bemoaned the slow pace of events. Legal luminaries piped in with their observations, primarily focused on the trial. Some were performative in content. We forgot the chilling words of the US Assistant Secretary of State William …

In the gloom of last Sunday, generated by the deaths of seven babies in less than a week at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in the Port of Spain General Hospital this month, I took heart from the offerings of fellow columnists Raffique Shah and Noble Phillip. During the …

“Forged from the love of liberty, in the fires of hope and prayer, with boundless faith in our destiny. We solemnly declare: Side by side, we stand Islands of the blue Caribbean sea. This our native land. We pledge our lives to thee.  “Here every creed and race find an …

“[Joe Young] was in his 30s when he led the bus strike that changed the nation, and when he spoke at the funeral of Basil Davis, one of the revolutionaries killed in 1970. “As a young person he was making real change, not just for himself but for a large …

“[…] With the declaration of the SOE on Tuesday 21 April 1970, [Makandal] Daaga and other members of the NJAC leadership, were detained on Nelson Island and at the Royal Jail.  “In the ensuing months, a reign of terror was released on the population. A dusk to dawn curfew was …

It wasn’t, we knew then, the best of times; it wasn’t, we now know, the worst of times.  When, in July 1990, Yasin Abu Bakr opened a door and, in David Rudder’s well-weighted words, showed us our other side, like Adam and Eve, we went frantically in search of a …

Distrust of politicians and public figures is a mainstay of democratic politics. Trust and distrust go hand in hand.  We have institutions as a check on untrammelled forays by politicians, but we also use public opinion as a brake. The savage lampooning or ‘fatigue’ of the unfortunate George Chambers—‘done see’/‘duncy’—signalled …

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 …

“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 …

The following column was written by Raffique Shah on 9 June 2000: IN 1970, I was the only Indian officer in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment. I was also the youngest officer, having graduated from Sandhurst in July 1966, some four months after I had turned 20. When I returned …

The letter penned by the Commissioner of Police condemning the valorising of the army mutineers of 1970 brought to the surface several important issues. One such issue is the fact that, even in tiny countries like this one, it is entirely possible to live in an insulated space with little …