FIVE LAVENTILLE residents who appeared in the Port-of-Spain Fourth Magistrates’ Court on gun and marijuana charges were yesterday granted bail in the sum of $100,000 each. On Monday the five were remanded in custody by Magistrate David Harris pending a tracing of their criminal records.
The five men — Jamal Goodridge, 16, Ronald Mohammed, 18, Keron Wint, 26, Anthony Agard, 23 and Brian Small 31 appeared before Magistrate David Harris charged with possession of marijuana and possession of a Smith and Wesson firearm. The charges were laid indictably, so the men were not called upon to plead. The five were arrested last Friday at St John Street, Quarry Road, Laventille. In his application for bail on behalf of the five men on Monday, defence attorney Godson Phillip told the magistrate that his clients had no previous or pending matters.
The attorney stated that he was genuinely concerned for persons who appeared before the court and did not get bail and had to face the prison system. He also noted that since prison had very limited opportunities for rehabilitation, it was not the best place for a first time offender to be since it offered a great chance of corrupting that person. He pleaded that given the fact that his clients all had clean records that they be granted bail pending tracing. He said that while he was concerned about all of his clients, he was especially asking that the youngest of the offenders be spared the experience of incarceration by being granted bail. Following the attorneys plea the magistrate remanded the five into custody. However when they re-appeared in court yesterday they were granted $100,000 bail each. The matter was adjourned to August 22.
OPPOSITION leader Basdeo Panday has charged that an “unholy alliance” between the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) government and Team Unity (TU) leader Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, was responsible for an attack on one of the nation’s oldest trade union organisations.
However, Panday added, the alliance would not adversely affect support for the UNC. Panday made the comments while addressing the media on Monday evening, after a UNC executive meeting was held at the party’s headquarters at Rienzi Complex in Couva. “Manning and the PNM have set out to destroy the 66-year old union and now we see Mr Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj trying to put the finishing touches to this destruction,” Panday said. “They believe that by destroying the All Trinidad Sugar and General Workers Trade Union, they will in some way, hurt the UNC. Of course they are wrong,” Panday added. To prove his point, Panday told the media that during the recently held Local Government election poll (which the ruling PNM won), the Opposition party received 147,340 votes against the ruling party’s 142,300 votes. He also revealed that his party had scheduled a “retreat” for MP’s and top party officials on September 7, to “examine” the results of the Local Government poll.
Panday thundered that sugar workers and cane farmers would not “ever forget” the role that Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, Trevor Sudama and Ralph Maraj played in putting the PNM in power. And asked to comment on the findings of the NACTA poll which predicted that “former sugar workers and canefarmers would bury Panday and the Opposition party’s present leadership,” the Opposition leader reiterated his “suspicions” about both the poll, and also the person responsible for it. “I believe that that poll is fraudulent, and I am beginning to suspect the author of that poll as being in the pay of a certain person, whose name I will not call,” Panday said. Pressed to call the name of the “certain person,” Panday still refused to divulge the information, opting instead to give a wry smile and the comment, “you know who I am speaking about.” Responding to news reports of an impending increase in NIS payments, Panday said Prime Minister Manning has an “infinite propensity to raise taxes.” “He is raising taxes and imposing burdens on the people to supplement the wild spending he has embarked on,” Panday charged, adding the country was becoming aware of what they had done, by electing the Manning administration into the corridors of power. Also attending the press conference was UNC Chairman Wade Mark, who said the UNC’s party congress had been scheduled for October 12, while the National Assembly of Delegates, was scheduled for November 30. He also predicted that the PNM’s plan for a “restructured” sugar industry would include an importation of sugar by “PNM agents” who had already “been set up to import sugar.”
FORMER Attorney-General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj yesterday called upon Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday to join him in a new crusade to champion the cause of sugar workers. Commenting on the findings of Sunday’s NACTA poll which said Panday’s political demise was cemented because the United National Congress (UNC) did nothing over the last six years to secure the interests of sugar workers, Maharaj told Newsday it was not too late for Panday and the UNC to join with him to help former Caroni (1975) Limited workers and he “would like to extend an invitation to them.”
However the former AG said it was “laughable” for Panday to blame the current predicament of sugar workers on himself, Trevor Sudama and Ralph Maraj. Maharaj recalled that while the UNC was in government, he was one of several persons within the Cabinet who agitated consistently for the problems at Caroni to be addressed. “Mr Panday did not have time at that time for sugar workers,” he said. Maharaj added that it was Panday who dismissed him (Sudama and Maraj), called general elections in 2001 and who together with the UNC’s financiers believed “the absence of us (Maharaj, Sudama and Maraj)” would help the party win those elections. He explained that against that background, there was no way that he, Sudama or Maraj could have helped the People’s National Movement (PNM) oust the UNC from government or be responsible for what happened to sugar workers. “I feel very sorry for Mr Panday,” the former AG stated. On the issue of land distribution, Maharaj agreed with Panday that the PNM had plans to divide Caroni’s lands amongst friends and supporters of the ruling party. Similar to Panday, Maharaj also claimed to have information to that effect. “There seems to be a conspiracy in the allocation of Caroni’s lands,” he said. Agriculture Minister John Rahael has dismissed allegations of any improper distribution of Caroni lands as a figment of the UNC leader’s imagination.
A 16-year-old student of North Eastern College drowned Sunday evening but his body only resurfaced after 4 pm Monday, police said.
Police yesterday identified the teenager as Derion Alexander, of Graham Trace, Sangre Grande. He was a Fifth Form student of the school. Western Division police said Alexander was among 80 members of the Wesylon Adventist Church who went camping at the Chaguaramas Cove Beach and Restaurant on August 8. The camp was supposed to end yesterday. Police said around 1.45 pm Sunday, half of the group, including Alexander, went to the beach area. The group returned to their campsite around 3 pm and it was not until 7 pm they realised Alexander was missing. Members of the church group made several searches for Alexander, but all turned out to be futile. Around 4 pm Monday, however, police said Alexander’s body was seen floating near the shoreline of the Chaguaramas Cove. A report was made and a party of officers headed by Sgt Stephen Joefield and including PC Glasgow of the Carenage CID visited the scene and conducted investigations. The TT Coast Guard as well as District Medical Officer Dr Mootoo were summoned to the scene. Alexander’s mother, Jenecia Alexander-Picton, later identified her son’s body. The DMO pronounced Alexander dead and ordered his body removed to the Port-of-Spain Mortuary where a post-mortem was performed yesterday. PC Glasgow is continuing investigations.
A NEW YORK Councilwoman seeking re-election is the target of a smear campaign. A flyer is being distributed around New York with a photograph of her in a costume during Carnival celebrations in Trinidad in 2003.
The Brooklyn Councilwoman is also being accused of sending New York City money to Trinidad for programmes which have been scrapped. She has denied the charge. Her story was carried in yesterday’s edition of the New York Daily News. A flyer showing a photo of the Democrat covered with a large bull’s-eye—set beneath the words “Target Reyna” — has turned up at the Bushwick Houses, a 1,200-apartment public housing complex. The campaign poster appeared as the normally hardscrabble world of Brooklyn politics still reels from the City Hall assassination of Crown Heights Councilman James Davis, who himself was a guest of the Port-of-Spain City Corporation at this year’s Carnival celebrations. Davis was gunned down July 23 by political rival Othniel Askew in the balcony of the City Council chamber. “I felt alarmed, but not intimidated,” Reyna said on Monday about the flyer. “It’s one thing to do a negative piece on someone, but this is almost encouraging violence.” Reyna, who is married to an NYPD sergeant, has filed a complaint with police. “That’s the protocol for all elected officials,” she said. It’s unclear who distributed the flyer, which pictures Reyna in full Carnival dress; a snapshot taken during a privately funded City Council trip to Trinidad this year. The anonymous bull’s-eye flyer accuses the Dominican-born councilwoman of sending city money to Trinidad while summer recreation programmes were scrapped.
WHAT was initially dubbed the President’s Committee on Race Relations, is actually the President’s Committee for National Self Discovery.
It will not deal specifically with racial problems nor will it go “pickey pickey” for them, instead it will assist in forging a national identity and togetherness. The ten-member Committee, chaired by Independent Senator Professor Kenneth Ramchand, was yesterday formally introduced to the media by President George Maxwell Richards at President’s House. The other members are Vice Chairman, attorney and Independent Senator, Dana Seetahal; Dr Carol James, environmentalist; Dr Kirk Meighoo, political analyst; Jaye-Q Baptiste, columnist; Professor Rhoda Reddock, Head of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies, UWI; Dr Walton Looklai, historian and lecturer, UWI; Dr Patricia Mohammed from the Department of Gender Studies, UWI; Ivan Laughlin, land surveyor and human settlement consultant and Dr Claudius Fergus, historian and lecturer, UWI. The members will serve on a “pro bono publico basis” — that is free. They were described as a group of “talented, erudite, caring, committee and public spirited citizens with no overt political affiliation” by the President.
He said the Committee’s mandate will be “to promote knowledge and understanding of one another among the various ethnicities, and to devise strategies for transmitting that knowledge to the national community, in a sustained and systematic way over a period of 12 months in the first instance.”
The Committee was first mentioned by President Richards on May 29, at an Indian Arrival Day dinner at the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS). He had said then he was deeply concerned at the implications of statements from political commentators, that the two larger ethnic groups in Trinidad and Tobago were “more polarised than they have ever been before.” He noted there was the need for a lot of work and a lot of thinking to be done, to get to know one another better. Yesterday President Richards said he was hopeful that “all right minded citizens would like, as I would, to see the establishment of greater unity and harmony among our people.” He said he was of the firm belief that “this is one of the prerequisites for the much vaunted Vision 2020 to take off.” The President further said it was “deeply troubling” that after more than 40 years of Independence, the kind of unity envisaged by the framers of the Constitution had not been achieved. He reminded citizens that they lived in a country where every religion, race and colour existed, and while each group was unique, “equally we are products of the melting pot of cultures and peoples.” Ramchand in his remarks about the Committee said a special attempt would be made to ensure it is “not manipulable” because for far too long various Committees and Institutions had come under the suspicion of being “manipulable by politicians.” He assured that the Committee would operate like a “think tank”, totally independent with no one person dominating its work, and whatever comes out will be based on consensus among all. He also described the Committee as one against “ignorance” which will not deal specifically with racial problems nor go “pickey, pickey” for them. The Committee which has been meeting regularly within the last month, is expected to meet fortnightly. Although its pogramme of works is not yet finalised, it will organise symposiums, set up linkages with communities and various other activities to achieve its goal.
Anthony Hosang, President, TT Manufacturers’ Association (TTMA), has appealed to Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez as well as Prime Minister Patrick Manning to ensure that the revenues derived from oil and gas are used to support and develop the social and productive levels of both countries, so that all citizens will prosper.
Speaking on behalf of the private sector at a breakfast meeting in honour of Chavez on Saturday, Hosang said: “Oil and gas provide the revenue, but it has been proven that it is the non-oil manufacturing sector that provides the sustainable productive employment so desperately needed for our citizens.” He also spoke about the deep-rooted trade relations developed between TT and Venezuela. “Many TT manufacturers look to Venezuela as a source for raw materials and as a market for our finished product.” Hosang said that TT and the rest of Caricom are a market for Venezuelan products. He explained that millions of dollars have been spent in developing these markets and these trade ties. “But events in the recent past have had a negative effect on the levels of trade. Venezuela naturally remains one of the most important trading partners for TT, and we anxiously look forward to the return of the level of trade that we both have enjoyed in the past.” He also spoke about the readiness of both countries for a globalised marketplace — the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) — which is expected to come into effect by January 2005. Revenues from oil and gas, he argued, must be used to aggressively sustain and grow non-oil manufacturing sectors through strengthened regulatory institutions and infrastructure. Hosang said he hoped that Chavez’s visit would lay the foundation for the cementing and further development of trade relations.
The newly appointed chairman of the Princes Town Regional Corporation (PTRC), Kemchan Ramnath, has an action plan to make the rural town of Princes Town one of the most admired in the country.
Ramnath who is an attorney made this disclosure shortly after he was sworn in as chairman of the corporation. “My main priority is to concentrate on developing the infrastructure of this area in such a way that families would not have to journey far away for outdoor activities,” he said. The development of recreational spots into parks, will be given first priority. High on his agenda also are sports and culture. He noted that these two aspects of social development and progress would help to make the southern town into one that will be admired by all. “There is need to focus on the development of the rural districts of Princes Town so that the villagers can immediately benefit from these upgraded projects,” he said.
Speaking from behind his new desk at the PTRC’s office in the heart of Princes Town, he noted that the complaint of bad road conditions is also high on his list for a better town. Where landslips seem to be the main deterrent for anyone visiting Princes Town, Ramnath said that already assessments are being done on this problem and PTRC will do everything in its power to begin repair work as early as possible. He also noted that the business community has doubled in the recent years in P/Town as a result of the increase in population of the area. “The increase in commercial businesses is a sign that the town is growing and there is need to develop the roads so as to encourage shoppers from all parts of the country,” he said. Among the businesses that have opened their doors in Princes Town are Francis Fashion and Shoe Locker, Pizza Boys, Pennywise Cosmetics, Persad’s Wholesale Supermarket, Dia-mondtex. There has also been an increase in jewel shops and fast-food outlets on High Street. He noted that P/Town has many local tourist attractions. These include Devil’s Woodyard located in New Grant as well as the Buen Intento Gardens, that won the Best Garden in the PM Best Village Garden competition for 2002. The various mandirs, mosques and churches are beautiful spiritual institutions that hold the attention of visitors to P/Town as well. Many of these were built in P/Town more than 100 years ago, he added.
IT IS quite laughable that the United States is now earnestly seeking the support of the United Nations to deal with the rogue government of North Korea which clearly presents a far more dangerous threat to the US and the rest of the world than Saddam Hussein ever did. The inconsistency is blatant and serves also to expose the gross hypocrisy in the Bush adminisration’s proud boast that they had toppled a brutal dictator in Iraq whose weapons of mass destruction threatened the security of the US and the Middle East.
The Bush government has not only declared it has no aggressive intent on North Korea but is now seeking by a process of international diplomacy to persuade the reckless regime of Kim Jong Il to drop is overt programme of building nuclear bombs. Mr Bush contemptuously ignored the disapproval of the UN Security Council and world opinion to launch a pulverising invasion of Iraq, although Saddam Hussein had denied having any weapons of mass destruction and the UN weapons inspectors were asking for more time to complete their assignment. No such weapons have been found, it is now clear that the US President conned the entire world on that pretext and now US troops are reaping the rewards of their illegal invasion and occupation by a retaliatory guerrilla war in which they are picked off like sitting ducks on a daily basis.
But why now the appeasing diplomatic treatment of the North Korean regime which is no less brutal than Saddam’s, far more unpredictable and devious and makes no bones about its nuclear programme and ambitions? Is it because Kim Jong Il’s country is not an oil producer, has no strategic value to the US or, as a Trini would say, monkey know which tree to climb? After all, North Korea is a swaggering, isolationist, maverick military state with a standing army of millions. But its threat to the US, the Near East and the rest of the world is patent and frightening in its open admission of having built a number of nuclear bombs, that it is busily producing the stuff to build more and that it will make use of them in whatever ways it chooses. Having regard to Kim’s chronic duplicity, there is no ruling out the possibility that he may want to auction off one to the highest bidder – any of the terrorist nations or groups which could include Osama Ben Laden.
The fact that Kim Jong Il is a serial agreement-and-promise-breaker makes the situation even more dangerous, since he apparently cannot be trusted. He began to play this game back in the early 1990s when his plutonium-producing programme broke both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and an agreement with the South to keep the peninsula nuclear free. His recently discovered uranium enriching and his admission of resuming plutonium reprocessing have, in effect, consigned these agreements and his 1994 one with the US to the scrap heap. In addition, Kim has sent packing the few international monitors who were keeping an eye on the plutonium-laden spent fuel-rods which he had stored as part of an earlier deal. While smashing Saddam Hussein’s regime, which had no WMDs and presented no threat to the US, was no big thing for bully Bush, the idea of dealing in the same fashion with the dangerous Kim and his determination to join the nuclear club, of course, will not occur to the man who governs the world’s only superpower, nor will any recognition of the hypocrisy of the US approach to these two “threatening” regimes cause any readjustment in the self-seeking motives of American foreign policy.
It is a known fact that Professor Selywn R Cudjoe openly campaigned for the ruling party, prior to the administration change. Since securing victory at the polls. The Government has appointed Professor Selwyn R Cudjoe to an influential Central Bank position. Professor Cudjoe has been appointed by Prime Minister Patrick Manning to the Race Relations Committee. Professor Cudjoe is also scheduled to represent Afro-Trinidadian culture at the 2003 Carifesta in Surinam.
Professor Cudjoe’s National Association for the Empowerment of African People (NAEAP) representatives such as Rose Janniere and Jennifer Johnson also hold official positions in the government of Trinidad and Tobago. Prime Minister Patrick Manning gave the feature address at the launch of Professor Cudjoe’s publication “Beyond Boundaries”. The purpose of listing Professor Cudjoe’s new found status in society is to bring home the point that Professor Cudjoe has the ear and sympathy of the Prime Minister and indeed the Cabinet of Trinidad and Tobago. Therefore the statements made by Professor Cudjoe are much more important than they previously were as the professor is now in a position to transform his ideas into reality.
It is in this light that the statements made at the Second Annual Emancipation NAEAP (31st July. 2003, Cascadia Hotel, St Ann’s) by President Prof Selwyn Cudjoe deserve examination. Professor Cudjoe urged the Government to make race a criterion for university admission similar to the recent American decision. “Eight percent of university students (in UWI) consist of one race. In the University of Michigan case a court ruled that race should be a factor in admissions. We in Trinidad and Tobago must do the same. Our Universities cannot be 90 percent East Indians and ten percent black people.” As an aside he added individual Africans must also do their part to gain admission. This declaration by Professor Cudjoe thus far has escaped comment from the University and other commentators. It is interesting to note that Professor Cudjoe does not extend the same liberal affirmative action programme in other areas such as employment within the public service, police, CEPEP, etc and other areas of State control.
The celebrity Affirmative Action (AA) case that currently occupies Cudjoe’s spotlight involving the University of Michigan begs review. The admission-values formula for Michigan is as follows: 80 points for a perfect GPA, 20 for being a minority, 20 for being a scholarship athlete, 12 for a perfect SAT score, four for being the child of an alumnus, three for an outstanding essay, and bonus points for “socioeconomic status and other characteristics.” No artist in the world could draw such a clear illustration of absurdity for caring eyes to see. According to Michigan’s code of values, your skin-shade is twice as important as being superbly intelligent (as only those who even score near perfect on the SAT can be) and nearly seven times more important than having remarkable writing skills and a demonstrable grasp of the English language. Therefore, a study by the Center for Equal Opportunity found “the odds of being admitted if you were a black student with the same qualifications as a white applicant were 174-to-1.” (Wall Street Journal July 12, 2002) The median SAT score of admitted blacks being 230 points below that of whites; with the average GPA lagging by a half-point from a four-point system.
The great retreat that is AA is in full gear, and despite the many roadblocks of public outrage it has encountered, it continues ever backward-dozing on through the gates of US graduate schools, plunging recklessly into the damp, desultory abyss that awaits it. What is this abyss, exactly? Like most “progressive” causes, affirmative action could not be more ancient if it were a sensible Parisian thought. Its primary basis is the same that ruled the societies of status in the past: that it is legitimate to evaluate an individual based entirely on factors over which he has no control; not now, not then and, not ever. Whether that factor is color, caste or creed, the principle is the same: preordination above personal quality. In other words: collective judgment versus individual evaluation. (“Affirmative Action for the Insane” Alec Mouhibian Liberty Magazine,August 5, 2003)
Booker T Washington’s famous slogan was that the necessity for blacks was not to whine or seek government coercion, but “prepare to compete in the market.” (“Up From Slavery” Booker T. Washington) The free-market knows only objective value, not colour, and as such Washington explicitly saw it as the arena for the demise of racism. For racial-preferences is racism by any definition. Racial-preferences are premised on the purest kind of racism: the belief that certain races are innately inferior, needing lowered standards and expectations if ever to have a chance. The problem is enforced diversity, not of intellect and interest, but in levels of intellect and interest. The problem is a formula under which ability becomes liability, character is sacrificed to victimology, and independence succumbs to preordained grouping. These traits are most bluntly manifest in racial-preferences and the “hardships” system. But just as the admissions process is an example of the pervading decay of academe, so are there pervading consequences of the decay of the admissions process. Keeping in mind that it expresses the core assumptions of affirmative action, examine Professor Cudjoe’s statement once more. What does it imply? Not only that Afro-Trinidadians are genetically inferior, but that the success of anyone is determined, not by his actions and merits, but his genetic code. It implies not only that Afro-Trinidadians need lowered standards, but that the success of any Afro-Trinidadian is thanks only to a handout.
