Although it has successfully appointed a replacement for former President and CEO, Conrad Aleong, troubles are not yet over for national carrier BWIA after a decision by employees to reject the pay cut proposed by the Board as part of its costcutting exercise. BWIA employees met with their unions on Thursday afternoon at the headquarters of the Allied Communication and Aviation Workers Trade Union (ACAWU) in Tacarigua to negotiate the terms of Government’s plan to reduce labour costs at the airline. A poll taken at the end of the meeting revealed that the majority of BWIA employees were not interested in a pay cut.
The consensus is that workers are not in a position to afford a pay cut at this time. Speaking to Newsday yesterday, President of the Communication Transport and General Workers Trade Union (CATU), Jagdeo Jagroop, revealed that the meeting concentrated on discussion among workers about the present situation. “Also,” he said, “in the 1980s there was a wage freeze from which we have not yet recovered. We just do not have the disposable income to accept a cut. “Although we are still angry at the company and the government, we have offered them the freedom to continue negotiations,” he added. Jagroop also revealed that the Unions had met with the Board of Directors on Tuesday morning after which the Board had requested a response by that afternoon. The Union was expected to submit its response to the Board yesterday afternoon in time for the Board to meet the Government’s June 16 deadline.
From the comfort of an air-conditioned courtroom to an open-air venue made muddy by early morning rains under overcast skies, the Port of Spain First Criminal Court shifted hearing yesterday to the scene of the crime at the Leon Street, Laventille apartment where Lester Ash was killed Christmas Day, 2000.
Kevon Nurse, 25, the man accused of shooting Ash to death in his apartment, was also on hand to witness the proceedings of the court. The difference was, on his return to the scene he was in handcuffs and escorted by three uniformed police officers. By 9.42 am the weather had cleared enough to permit the Court to visit the scene of the crime for about an hour. There was heavy police presence. The jury travelled in a yellow-band maxi, while the judge, attorneys and witnesses were taken in cars. While the heavy cirrus clouds backed off to permit some degree of sunshine, conditions generally remained sweaty and muggy. The rain had stopped but one was still faced with skipping puddles of water around the building.
Curious neighbours came out on their porches on the upper floors, while others shifted their curtains and peeked out. Others who lived in the vicinity of the building also came out to watch the proceedings. Most of the young men who came out of their homes to watch were camera-shy. As the camera was pointed in their direction, they either covered their heads, or turned their backs and strolled away. Trial judge, Justice Paula Mae-Weekes, attorneys — prosecuting and defence — and members of the jury heard on-the-spot evidence from witnesses who at times pointed out directions, indicating point of entry and exit of the alleged gunman. The small apartment on the ground floor of the three-storey apartment structure where Ash was supposed to have met his death was pointed out by a 14-year-old neighbour of the accused, Aneka Shockness, who is the State’s key witness.
Responding to questions put to her by Prosecutor Wayne Rajbansee, Shockness repeated some of her evidence which she gave earlier in court — how she saw Nurse put a mask over his head and enter Ash’s apartment with a silver object in his hand. Later, there were explosions that sounded like gunshots in the apartment. Nurse, the court heard, was also seen leaving the apartment with the mask over his head. On the spot, the witness Shockness was also asked a few questions by defence attorneys. Another witness, Dexter Simmons, said he saw a masked man enter and leave Ash’s apartment. After scoping the apartment and its immediate vicinity for just about an hour, the cops got into their jeeps, the judge and attorneys in their cars and the jurors in their maxi for the return trip to the Hall of Justice in Port of Spain. The intention was to hear evidence from one more witness, but since the witness arrived late, further hearing was adjourned to Monday morning.
A CENTRAL businessman with 12 previous convictions for fraud was yesterday granted bail when he appeared before a San Fernando magistrate on four fraud charges and one charge of larceny by trick.
Azad Ali Rahim was granted a total of $138,500 bail with surety to cover all five matters by Senior Magistrate Mark Wellington. The prosecution had objected to bail on the grounds that Rahim had 12 previous convictions for similar offences in 1996, had a prison record and a home in Gasparillo apart from his stated Chaguanas residence. One of the five charges was transferred to the Tunapuna Magistrates’ Court to be heard next Monday. Rahim in on $3,500 bail for that charge. Three matters were transferred to the Princes Town Magistrates’ Court, to be heard next Tuesday. He is on a total of $125,000 bail for these charges. The last charge was transferred to the Chaguanas Magistrates’ Court, to be heard next Wednesday and he is on $10,000 bail for that charge.
In the Princes Town matter, Rahim is charged with larceny by trick and two counts of uttering forged documents. The court heard that between August 13 to October 25, 2002, he allegedly defrauded Couva businessman Rabindranath Harnarine of $260,000. In the Chaguanas matter, Rahim was charged with uttering a false Petrotrin certificate of appreciation, which was supposed to have proven his managerial status at that company. Cpl Kent Ghisyawan of the San Fernando Fraud Squad is investigating the Chaguanas and Princes Town matters, while PC Eccles of the Port-of-Spain Fraud Squad is investigating the Tunapuna matter.
The Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) has strongly condemned attempts to “cover up” the biting incident involving the wife of an official at the Indian High Commission and a teacher at the Diego Martin Girls RC School, by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Indian High Commission.
In a release yesterday, TTUTA stated that following a meeting with the teacher Michelle Mylan, they intended to send a “strong letter to the Minister of Education” rebuking the lack of concern shown by officials of that ministry. Mylan was bitten approximately 16 times on her hand by the wife of the diplomat, following her refusal to let her son compete in a race during the school’s sports day. Speaking with Newsday, Oliver said TTUTA had issued a call for an investigation into the matter, but that these calls had been disregarded. Stating that Mylan had met with officials of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Indian High Commission last week, Oliver said TTUTA’s Industrial Relations Officer Matthew James had been denied entry to the meeting.
He revealed that at the meeting Mylan had been offered an apology by Indian High Commissioner Virendra Gupta and another member of his staff, but that Mylan’s attacker had not yet made an attempt to apologise to her. Instead, an attempt was made to badger Mylan into accepting the apology offered to her, and to leave the matter alone at the meeting, claimed Oliver. However, he added that since the incident, Mylan’s attacker seems to be gloating and “throwing” about the words “diplomatic immunity.” Oliver questioned whether diplomatic immunity afforded one the right to behave in such a manner, and expressed shock at the state of Mylan’s damaged hand. He said he doubted whether the teeth marks on her arm would ever fade. Additionally, he said the Education Ministry has yet to offer any words of comfort or counselling to Mylan, who is now on medical leave.
Describing Mylan’s mental state as “very traumatized,” he said she felt “deserted by the Ministry of Education”and that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs appeared to be more concerned about preserving relations between the two countries, than an official’s wife attacking one the nation’s teachers. Pledging to fight for compensation for Mylan, he said TTUTA further intended to demand an apology from the attacker, seek compensation for Mylan, and ensure that Mylan met with the Union’s lawyer to deal with relevant legal matters surrounding the issue. Newsday attempted to contact Education Minister Hazel Manning, and though reports confirmed that Manning was in office, we were directed to the Communications Department. Attempts to contact Acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Manniram Rambissoon, and the press office at the Indian High Commission proved futile.
THERE ARE more than enough places at Government schools in Tobago, THA Chief Secretary Orville London said Thursday.
He was responding to complaints from school principals over the THA’s decision to stop paying to place SEA students in private secondary schools. For the past several years, SEA students have been routinely placed at the private schools with the THA footing the bill. This was due to a shortage of secondary school places on the island. However, with the construction of three new Government secondary schools, two of which are to come on stream in September, there are now more school places than students, according to London. However the principals are upset over the move which they say can lead to the closure of these private institutions. They are seeking an urgent meeting with London.
Among other things, they have called for “the placement of one class of Form One students (about 40 students) at each school (St Joseph’s Convent, Harmon’s SDA, Elizabeth’s College) for the next three years.” London said he would meet with the principals, but their position is untenable. “That request will be very difficult to justify,” he told Newsday. The THA Chief Secretary said the number of First Form places available at Government and Government-assisted secondary schools was 1,050, while only 915 students would be entering school. “It means therefore even utilising the present stock, there is in fact likely to be a surplus of places. It will therefore be very irresponsible and difficult to justify, for us to go and pay for 120 of those students to go into private secondary school when we have a surplus of places for them in the Government and Government-assisted schools. “What we are hoping therefore is to be able to sit down with the private secondary schools and see how they can adjust their focus so that they can continue contributing to the educational thrust, without in any way having to utilise monies that would have normally been paid for places in secondary schools.” London added: “We do not want to see the dearth of private secondary schools in Tobago but we are faced with a reality. “We are dealing with taxpayers’ money and I cannot see how we can justify paying money for students to go into private secondary schools when we have more than enough places in the public secondary schools.”
AN AMERICAN professor has recommended that Trinidad and Tobago host an annual conference on obeah and traditional practices so “we may begin to understand and preserve the knowledge our ancestors left us.”
Professor James Small, who is also a student of African philosophical systems in Ghana, the Congo and Nigeria, was speaking at City Hall in Port-of-Spain in the 2003 Kwame Ture Memorial Public Lecture Series sponsored by the Emancipation Support Committee. He dealt with “African philosophy and the challenges of the 21st Century.” “We must call our African scholars together to write manuals on rites of passage for our young men and women, to teach the ethnical and moral principles of good character from age 6 to 20, so that our society remains grounded and grows stronger,” said Professor Small. He said African philosophy had contributed to transforming Trinidad and Tobago from a “slaveocracy” to a modern nation.
A packed City Hall auditorium also heard Professor Small say that the best calypso, jazz and other traditional African music and classical music should be used to create avenues for celebrating in formal and respectful ways. “Let us bring the Orisha shrines before the public, just as the church, mosque, temples and synagogues are in the public and let us engage in celebrations where we wear our traditional African attire and garments as our formal wear,” he said. “We must begin to teach the African way of life in our schools, our homes, our churches, our shrines, our sororities and our fraternities.”
Professor Small said love, harmony and balance will put the black man back in harmony with the rest of the world. He called on the African community in Trinidad and Tobago to pool their resources and pointed out that credit unions can be turned into banks. According to Professor Small, Trinidad and Tobago stands as a beacon in the African world, in spite of the problems this country is experiencing. Thursday night’s lecture is the first in a weekly series which will continue until Emancipation day. The next lecture takes place at the Simon Bolivar Auditorium.
CARACAS: Police and national guardsmen yesterday fought pitched street battles with supporters of President Hugo Chavez who attempted to disrupt an opposition rally in a poor Caracas district.
Troops in armoured vehicles arrived at the scene while “Chavistas,” as the president’s supporters are known, threw bottles, rocks and fireworks at the opposition demonstration. Hundreds of national guardsmen and police in riot gear launched tear gas grenades to disperse over 100 rowdy pro-Chavez activists. Columns of black smoke rose from tires burning in the street and mingled with thick clouds of white tear gas. No injures were reported. Ignoring government warnings that violence could erupt, opposition parties called the rally as part of a series of events in Caracas slums to prove Chavez’s traditional support among the poor has evaporated.
Interior Minister Lucas Rincon pleaded with march organisers to take the protest to an area not considered a Chavez stronghold. “We alert the population to the security risks that this act carries,” Rincon said in a late Thursday night address broadcast by law on all local television and radio stations. “This isn’t about impeding a political act. It’s about taking it to a less risky zone.” Hours before the planned protest, dozens of Chavez sympathisers burned tyres in a plaza on the only route to the opposition’s chosen site – an eastern Caracas street beneath hills covered by red-brick shanties. The protest comes three weeks after unidentified gunmen killed one and wounded ten at an opposition march in an impoverished neighbourhood in the west side of the capital. No one was arrested.
Leader of the Opposition Business in the Senate, Senator Wade Mark made some very strong allegations in the Upper House on Tuesday and it is to be hoped that he can defend these allegations and provide the country with the evidence, if such evidence exists. He stated that there were police and other death squads operating in the country. He stated that the Prime Minister and another Government Minister, Senator Joan Yuille-Williams were consorting with the outlawed Muslimeen and in fact, Mark went so far as to state that Prime Minister Manning has regular meetings with the leader of the Muslimeen and that after one such meeting, a former Muslimeen man was murdered at Movie Towne.
Not surprisingly, both Mr Manning and Yuille-Williams have denied these stories and so had the police about the existence of death squads. It is not good enough for Mr Mark to make these statements under cover of privilege in the Senate and leave it there. They are far too serious and startling to be left alone. Not so long ago, another UNC member, Mr Kelvin Ramnath, made a scene in the House of Representatives, defying the Speaker in his anger against a member of the government who made a statement about him that he considered untrue. Now we have Mr Mark making even more serious allegations than those that were made against Mr Ramnath. Nevertheless, the country must sit up and take notice of what Mr Mark said for according to our lead story today, 29 people have been shot and killed in the first six months of this year in what has been described as gang warfare. As far as we are aware, few arrests have been made and we really do not know exactly what is behind these killings — mainly centered in Laventille — other than what the police have told us about gang-warfare.
We are not suggesting for one moment that the police have a hit-sqaud “taking out” people considered to be criminal. But we do wonder whether there might not be something going on in the shadows about which the public is unaware. We believe that this issue must be carefully examined if only to assure the public that we really are not in the grip of any “Mongoose Gang” as suggested by Mr Mark. This is a country that is governed by the rule of law and we are well aware of the criminals in our midst who may indeed be killing one another. But we have to insist that the law be observed and that there is no group in the country taking the law into its hands and acting as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. We now expect Mr Mark to give the public all the information in his possession.
Former British foreign secretary Robin Cook discusses his resignation over the Iraq war and why it’s unlikely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
ON THE eve of the Iraq war, Robin Cook shook British politics by quitting the government in protest of the planned invasion. In his powerful resignation speech, the Foreign Secretary urged respect for multilateral agreements and insisted that the dangers posed by the regime of Saddam Hussein had been overstated. Cook, who served in Tony Blair’s cabinet as leader of Parliament’s House of Commons, claimed in particular that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense. His supporters now say that the Coalition’s failure to find such weapons has vindicated his stand. Cook, who still has his seat in Parliament, spoke this week to NEWSWEEK’s William Underhill in London.
Newsweek: Coalition Forces only overthrew Saddam Hussein a few weeks ago. There must be a chance that weapons of mass destruction will still be uncovered?
Robin Cook: These are things that are not easy to conceal. For a nuclear bomb, you need a nuclear reactor. For a missile, you need a large factory. You won’t find them round in someone’s back garden. And all these synthetic claims about Iraq being a big country are irrelevant. If Saddam had the capacity to hit us with weapons of mass destruction, we would have found it. I did say it was quite probable that he had laboratory stocks of biological toxins and chemical shells that might be used on the battlefield, but it’s an awful long time after the end of the war (and) we haven’t found any of them, either. One other point is frequently overlooked. Chemical and biological weapons have a limited shelf life. All the materials that Saddam had in 1991 (at the end of the Gulf War) would have degraded to the point of being useless long before 2003, whether or not he had destroyed them.
Newsweek: Isn’t it possible that Saddam Hussein ordered their destruction, as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has suggested?
Robin Cook: No. I don’t think it’s even remotely possible. I just cannot follow the Rumsfeld logic; that watching CNN and seeing the American build-up, Saddam said to his generals, “It’s obvious that the US is going to invade; we had better destroy our biggest weapons, so that when I am toppled there might be some very difficult questions for Donald Rumsfeld to answer.”
Newsweek: So was the public deliberately misled over the weapons’ existence?
Robin Cook: These are charged terms. I think it’s much wiser to keep the spotlight on the issues, and leave questions for the government to answer rather than end up (with) personalised headlines that I would then have to defend. The focus should be on how the government can square what it said at the time of the build-up to (war with) Iraq with what they have discovered — or failed to discover — in the aftermath. It is a real issue, which they are not entitled to brush under the carpet. We were sold the menace of the weapons of mass destruction as the reason for the war. And the (British) attorney general based his legal justification for war on the necessity to disarm Saddam Hussein. If those weapons didn’t exist then the justification falls away.
Newsweek: Are you saying that the Blair government itself never believed in the existence of these weapons of mass destruction?
Robin Cook: I never saw any (Cabinet) briefing or other evidence that suggested that there was an urgent or compelling threat from Saddam Hussein. I am not going to comment on the motivation or sincerity of others, but I am rather puzzled that people who went to the same briefings as me and saw the same material could come to such radically different conclusions. To be fair to the United States administration, it never made any bones about the reasons why it went to war. It wanted to carry out a change of regime in Iraq. And many of the proponents of that were lobbying for it long before September 11.
Newsweek: And that’s also why the British government went to war?
Robin Cook: No, but they were madly keen to prove that they were reliable allies of President Bush — and there were those around President Bush who were determined to have a war.
Newsweek: There are those in Washington who now appear to see the weapons issue as irrelevant.
Robin Cook: It was their decision to put this at the heart of their case. It cannot be a side issue after the war when they made it a central issue before the war.
Newsweek: Recent weeks have produced still more evidence to demonstrate the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s rule. Has that altered your position in any way?
Robin Cook: I was never in any doubt about the brutality of the Saddam Hussein’s regime, but neither government (the United States or Britain) ever based its case for invasion on brutality – because that’s simply no basis in international law for going to war just to change a regime. If we do decide that we are going to go to war to remove brutal regimes then we have a very busy time in front of us. We are not proposing to intervene to relieve the people of Zimbabwe of the repressive rule of President (Robert) Mugabe. We are not proposing to intervene in Burma where the military junta has run the country for longer than Saddam Hussein. We have allowed more people to be killed in the Congo civil war than were ever killed inside Iraq. If you are going to decide that brutality is a reason for military intervention, it must be a decision that is (made) multilaterally by an international forum. You cannot have individual nations such as the UK or the US deciding for themselves which ones they are going to pick on next. One important reason is that if you accept that principle, that countries can invade countries where you disapprove of the regime, the next time it may not be the US or the UK that acts on that principle.
Newsweek: How much damage has this affair done to Prime Minister Tony Blair?
Robin Cook: There is an issue of credibility not just for the Prime Minister, but for the government more generally. It is going to have to bite the bullet and admit there are no weapons of mass destruction that could have posed a credible threat to Britain and probably were none at the time. The longer they continue to pretend that one day they are going to turn the corner and find a nuclear reactor the more improbable it becomes.
OTTAWA, JUNE 11, 2003 (Zenit.org) Here is the text of a letter from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to Federal Justice Minister Martin Cauchon regarding the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision to redefine marriage in order to allow same-sex unions.
The Honourable Martin Cauchon, PC, MP, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
Dear Mr Cauchon: On behalf of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, I urge you to appeal the recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in the case of Halpern et al.v. The Attorney General of Canada that redefined marriage to be “The voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others.”
Marriage as a public commitment between a man and a woman has profound cultural, religious and social significance. As a word and as an institution marriage is full of history, meaning and symbolism. The State has a fundamental interest in this social institution where most children are procreated and nurtured and, according to recent statistics, continues to be the most stable environment in which to raise a family. The reasons for the Court’s finding that “the Attorney General of Canada did not demonstrate any pressing and substantial objective for maintaining marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution” are unconvincing and disappointing. We know that not every married couple has children, that not all children are born in marriages, and that not all marriages lead to stable and nurturing environments for children.
We also recognise that, with the help of new technologies and the intervention of a third party of the opposite sex, same-sex unions can have children. Exceptions, however, do not invalidate but prove the rule; individual practices and choices do not determine the objectives of an institution such as marriage which plays such a pivotal social role. The Court’s conclusions about the objectives of marriage should concern Canadians about the future of our country and Members of Parliament who are ultimately responsible for the development of social policy in this country. The written argument filed in the Ontario Court of Appeal by you as the Attorney General of Canada echoed this concern very well: “The Charter was never intended to effect a wholesale alteration of the fundamental societal structures and institutions within which it emerged.”
As you know, members of the House of Commons affirmed on 9 June 1999, by a vote of 216 to 55, “That, in the opinion of this House, it is necessary, in light of public debate around recent court decisions, to state that marriage is and should remain the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, and Parliament will take all necessary steps within the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada to preserve this definition of marriage in Canada.” We respectfully ask you to live up to this resolution and do everything necessary to preserve the definition of marriage, including appealing the recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal. Millions of Canadians, who have invested a great deal of hope and meaning in marriage, are counting on you.
Sincerely,
Msgr Peter Schonenbach, PH
General Secretary
Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops
CC: Members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights
