None of the traditional boxing powers from the Caribbean will be present at the Beijing Olympic games later this year. The Jamaicans, Trinis and Bajans all got eliminated in the qualifying tournament currently being held in Guatemala.
Thankfully, face was saved for the Caribbean pugilists by the Bahamians and USVI, ensuring that 3 of the 23 spaces on offer will be accounted for by us.
Check out this video on Trinidad’s financial sector and the plans for the future.
To be fair, there are challenges ahead (example – inflation) but what is clear is that this country’s leadership is not comfortable to rest on its laurels because of the current windfall from oil. Like Jamaica’s bauxite, their oil is a commodity that is likely to either run out or lose its relatively high value soon enough . Unlike Jamaica’s leadership at the time, the current TT government seem to have learned from their neighbors history and are preparing for the foreseeable possibilities accordingly.
How?
By creating industries where none existed before. link
shot of the twin towers, downtown Port of Spain – bartandlife.wordpress.com photo
Filed under development
Damn…you miss reading the paper for one day (Saturday) and you miss it all.
Sorry to be so late on this…Trinidad and Tobago will go to the polls on November 5, after Prime Minister Patrick Manning finally called elections on Friday, at the last sitting of the House of Representatives.
Now T&T politics is always entertaining. What I have always found interesting there is that unlike the old two-party system that has prevailed in other islands, in Trinidad, it has always been the PNM (founded by Trini father of Independence, Dr. Eric Williams) versus the latest up-and-comer. And just when you think one party has cemented itself as the ‘second party’ (e.g UNC), some bacchanal does happen and a new set (or old come back as new) does throw dey hats in de ring. This election the real opposition seems to be the Congress of the People, a splinter party led by Winston Dookeran. Not surprisingly, they found they could not stand Basdeo Panday and went out on their own. Meanwhile, Bas, that old political animal, is still fighting for his place, even as he seems increasingly irrelevant and done for in Trinidad politics. His seat has been vacant since the whole conviction for corruption thing (though he can run for it again now that a new election has been called), his party has been led by Kamla Bissesar-Persaud for the last two years basically and even some of those left in the UNC don’t seem to want him to lead them into the next elections. But Bas is a wily creature so I wouldn’t count him out yet.
What really has me though is the state of the PNM. To everyone outside of TnT, they seemed like a lock to win another term, but lately it seems like they messing themselves up with this whole controversial ‘screening process’ and the polls taken to assess whether sitting MPs are popular/fit enough to be the party’s candidates this time around.
Obviously, this has caused a whole lot of discomfort for the MPs who have felt like sitting ducks. Some like PNM deputy leader and Diego Martin Central MP Ken Valley have chosen to fight. Valley denounced the whole screening process as a sham.
Others, like San Fernando West MP Diane Seukeran seemingly decided to jump before they were pushed. Her withdrawal early last month leaves the precarious seat even more precariously poised for the UNC now.
What is puzzling to me and everyone else in the region, is why do this? Maybe Manning is a political whiz and he knows what he’s doing, but fomenting discord and discomfort within your own party a mere two months before the elections just does not seem smart. If he was so set on this polling and screening process to assess the strength of the candidates, why not do this much earlier to allow the bad feelings to subside a bit and the image of the party to recover?
It just seems baffling from where I stand at least. I mean, Trinidad is BOOMING. Oil and gas revenues have the country awash in money - new cars and new houses popping up everywhere, university tuition has now been made free and they have now even surpassed Barbados for per capita income. Not to mention that Trini businesses seemingly have money burning a whole in their pocket and are investing in, merging with or taking over companies around the region at will.
Rampant crime aside, Trinidadians are living sweet right now and Manning is presiding over it all. Furthmore, the opposition parties are still fractious and divided, with the UNC trying vainly to coax their breakaway flock in the COP ’back home’ and the COP stonily telling them to ‘talk to the hand’.
Hence Manning and the PNM should be a shoo-in to win the election, not discounting the recent bad run of election form by incumbent parties in Jamaica, St. Lucia, BVI and Bahamas. This move just seems self-destructive and masochistic. Is like he want to join Portia and Kenny and Perry ‘out in de cold’.
Unless it is that Manning is so very confident that his party can win anyway that he figures now is the time he can best afford to rock the boat and shape up the party into a lean, mean, election-winning machine.
Boy, I ent know. Truth be told, Trinidad does always confuse me. It’s like some kind of parallel universe where only Trinis can figure out what seems like chaos from the outside. Look at how they held three elections in two years between 2000-2002 and Trinis ‘ent dig nutten’. A former Prime Minister got convicted of corruption and thrown in jail (briefly) and Trinis ‘ent dig nutten’. The Chief Justice and Chief Magistrate subsequently got into a big imbroglio over the whole thing (I honestly still can’t figure out who is supposed to have done what but it’s been very entertaining- had media friends of mine from TnT calling me merrily telling me how they were staking out the Chief Justice in his house and thing). Once more, Trinis ent dig nutten.
So maybe this polling/screening mess is not as big a deal as it seems from the outside. In other places, such a show of no-confidence in your own team would be a big deal. People would cross the floor, there would be hand-wringing and agonising.
But not in Trinidad. Nutten can seemingly stop the bacchanal. I look forward to their elections.
Filed under Uncategorized
Jamaican Opposition Leader Portia Simpson-Miller’s fiery speech at the People’s National Party’s annual conference this weekend has already sparked criticism.
In an editorial today, the Jamaica Gleaner stated:
But responsible criticism can never be confused with the kind of demagogy displayed on Sunday. It was an outrageous performance with alarming implications for Jamaica and the PNP.
The editorial in today’s Nation newspaper in Barbados was of much the same view:
The warning given by former prime minister Portia Simpson-Miller at her party’s 69th annual conference at the weekend could only have a negative impact on the yet to be structured “engagement” between government and opposition.
Both were of the opinion that Mrs. Simpson-Miller should have been more responsive to the conciliatory tone set by new Prime Minister Bruce Golding who, from his initial victory speech on September 3, has spoken of the need for bipartisan co-operation, particularly in light of the very close election results (less than 1% of the popular vote seperated the Jamaica Labour Party and the PNP).
On the one hand, I have been impressed by Golding’s call for more co-operation and rather convinced by his argument that the close election results might show that Jamaicans are weary of the vicious partisan nature of their politics and by their actions are forcing the political parties to work together in the best interest of Jamaica.
On the other hand…isn’t this what democracy is all about? Can not the closeness of the election and narrowness of the victory margin also be seen as the voters’ way of keeping checks and balances on their politicians? Mulling it over now, I wonder if it could not be a way of ensuring that the party in power does not get too comfortable.
After all, until the PNP’s unprecedented run of power began in 1989, Jamaicans were pretty much a ’two term’ electorate. Just as the party in power started to become smug and complacent…out you go! Next!
Bajans used to be that way too but that is a whole ‘nother post…
Perhaps Jamaicans realised they had erred in allowing one party to become too comfortable and by effecting such a narrow balance of power in the House, they have decided to get back to keeping politicians on their toes- as they should be.
After all, corruption is a serious issue in Jamaica and Jamaican politics. A party with a small margin of victory and a watchful, pitbull Opposition is less likely to raid the public coffers and try to get away with million-dollar hanky panky.
For example, if the party in power here was more seriously challenged, would we so many instances of ridiculous cost overruns like the one on the Operation Freeflow highway expansion project here in Barbados, where we were blithely and vaguely informed that the ‘scope of the project had increased’ and so the project cost was likely to increase threefold from US$60 million to US$180 million? And would the government have been so arrogantly complacent as to remain silent about it for weeks or would they have rushed to explain and itemise exactly where this money was going? And would a government spokesman really have had the temerity to offer such a bs rationale as Clyde Mascoll did this weekend, saying ‘oh, it’s not really increasing threefold, just two-fold’?
Ok, I’m on a bit of a rant now…back to the subject at hand.
I am thinking perhaps Portia’s threat to:
Let them have sleepless nights … We are going to be their worst nightmare… So them look after themselves first and think we are going to just sit down and sup it. It not going like that, and we want to know how much all of them going to cost. Let me serve notice that we are going to ask every month for the cost and we going to check it up.
may not be such a bad thing after all. I’m still torn …. is it in JA’s best interest for the PNP to be conciliatory doves or aggressive, watchful hawks?
This post was spurred by this article in this week’s International edition of Newsweek called Land of Reggae and Homophobia which looks at the much-discussed homophobia of Jamaica.
Now having lived in Jamaica for a few years, I think Mr. Contreras is overstating the situation. I am not at all trying to make excuses for JA’s homophobia – I think it is disgusting particularly as I have several Jamaican friends who are homosexual- mostly male, one female. I would like that they could live their lives as freely and openly as they want. But the situation is not as dread as the writer makes out – it is not like they cannot live their lives because they do, fairly peaceably.
Furthermore, I find that too often foreign commentators/reporters use Jamaican dancehall music to assess the mindset of Jamaica- big mistake. Dancehall music is like a fun-house mirror to Jamaican society- it reflects, but it also exaggerates and distorts. The true Jamaica is more nuanced and complex than the simplistic, nihilistic image put across in dancehall music. Most Jamaicans are not as virulently anti-homosexual and anti-oral sex as songs make them out to be. They don’t care – do yuh thing, just don’t put it all in their face.
As to the violence against homosexuals discussed in the article, that is true. However, I cannot sincerely argue that homosexuals are any bigger a target than anyone else – Jamaica is violent, full stop. According to UNICEF, more than 300 children were murdered in Jamaica between 2000 and 2005. In the time I was there, I heard of more instances of children being murdered- often victims of drive-by shootings or gangland terrorism where whole families are murdered than of homosexuals being attacked. Shit, when I was there for about 2 weeks before and during the World Cup, I read of at least three instances of children being killed. So if a child is nothing to some Jamaicans, what is an adult homosexual? Of even more minor consequence, that’s what.
Is this a good thing? Hell no! My point is, that violence against homosexuals and general homophobia in JA is collateral damage- part of the wider murderscape and larger problem of Jamaica. That problem is poverty, ignorance wilfully inflicted and maintained by the political leadership in Jamaica and the resultant devotion of Jamaicans to an evangelical, Old Testament style mentality that urges ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’.
Newsweek should do an article on that. After all, it is a weekly magazine which by its very nature should be more focused on in-depth, investigative articles. This simplistic, surface approach taken in the article is really disappointing to me.
This morning’s post, over at Barbados Free Press got me to thinking about my own experience with QEH.I spent a number of nights in QEH last year, as well as attended the maternity clinic there.Late in my pregnancy I was admitted overnight for observation as an existing heart murmur became increasingly noisy. I laboured and delivered my son in the maternity ward at QEH, and stayed almost a week there when my son was born because of his jaundice. I simply couldn’t afford to go to Bayview or The Birthing Centre, although that is what I preferred.I posted in my own blog about my fears of being in a Third World hospital, but hear what, my son and I both received the best care I could have gotten anywhere in the world for free. However, the physical reality of the hospital is daunting and depressing for just about anyone who actually stays there. At the end of my five night stay there, I was in a state of agitation because I was tired of the narrow uncomfortable beds, the ‘rules’ of the ward, one (and only one) ‘devil nurse’ (the rest were lovely), the awesome heat and general depressed state of the building I was in.I recognised that the doctors who attended me, were some of the best on the island, but the state of the equipment, the lack of reliable computers (and computers in general) leading to the long delays of almost everything, the quality of everything patients have to use and interact with, made me realise that QEH is as much a Third World hospital as I feared.Better than most, but still not as good as the ‘Second World’ status the PM long ago asserted this country to be.So when I hear people complaining about QEH, I feel it understand, and identify, because I’ve been through it. It is a ‘free medical care’ for the most part true, but it is excellent care being provided with little to no real support by the government of Barbados.It’s a short changing of the people of Barbados to boast about the medical care on the island, and how QEH is so good, when patients sleep in awful beds, equipment doesn’t work, staff don’t get paid, and almost everything is aged and aging.Where does the money go?Or should I ask, “Into whose pocket does the money go?”
Since weekend, rumours have been flying around St. Lucia and its diaspora (of which I am unofficially part…ahem!) that Sir John Compton is dead. If he’s not, he seems to be barely hanging on to life. HTS/CMC reporter Clinton Reynolds last night practically gave the St. Lucian Prime Minister his last rites, saying that members of the Cabinet were meeting, presumably to begin ‘funeral arrangements’ and that Sir John’s family was with him to be with him in his last moments.
Ok then.
According to reports I have been hearing this weekend, he has been hospitalised with a severe chest infection (read pneumonia – for an 82 year old, read dying) and that he was flown by air ambulance to a hospital in Martinique, where he is in intensive care.
It is perhaps rude of me to harp on this in what may be the man’s last moments (then again he could do like Fidel Castro or Ariel Sharon- just hover between life and death…then again…speaking of rumours of demise… is Castro alive?) but why did St. Lucians elect a geriatric to lead their country? I mean, was the SLP that bad? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – that was just stupid. They killed the man. No 82 year old needs that kind of stress.
Filed under Uncategorized
