TriniTuner.com | Latest Event:
Moderator: 3ne2nr Mods
rfari wrote:I asking again, uml and zr. Do you listen to the PNM meetings at all? To hear both sides
zoom rader wrote:rfari wrote:I asking again, uml and zr. Do you listen to the PNM meetings at all? To hear both sides
Rfari PNM owe me money.
Everytime I see Rowley speak his garbage on TV, I pelt my TV through the window.
but SRS tho rfari wrote:zoom rader wrote:rfari wrote:I asking again, uml and zr. Do you listen to the PNM meetings at all? To hear both sides
Rfari PNM owe me money.
Everytime I see Rowley speak his garbage on TV, I pelt my TV through the window.
RASC wrote:UNC Facebook hott with cuss words.
They're literally ripping into Gypsy...all who "ALWAYS KNEW HE WAS NO GOOD"
I have never seen a place so rife with verbal violence and venom in words with anyone who opposes them. It's very similar to how you see them talking here. Is it a cultural thing within the UNC for the men to behave such effeminate?
Women I expect to be bitter and whiney-but men?
zoom rader wrote:rfari wrote:zoom rader wrote:rfari wrote:I asking again, uml and zr. Do you listen to the PNM meetings at all? To hear both sides
Rfari PNM owe me money.
Everytime I see Rowley speak his garbage on TV, I pelt my TV through the window.
Yeah I listen to PNM More than PP when I get the chance.
I kinda like the PNM "discussion" they had in Sando West. I felt the West ppl did not ask the right questions and PNM took advantage of this with spin. PNM set the ambiance with being cool and claim but was a real con job.
They don't do that for their safe seats, they more pump those ppl with Wajang type behaviour for their communications.
San Do East under this new guy Mitchell is on Auto pilot, it's like the East dont exist and they do as they told with any donkey going up
If PNM disassociate itself from the wajang type behaviour from Marlene and Camile, things might have improved. I think once you stained you should get booted out from PNM. I said years ago on tuner PNM needs to do house cleaning and stop this racist nonsense they on. They need to move away from this black man party thing, a lot of folk stay clear away from PNM because of this.
Franklin Khan Should have been booted out long time but they still holding on to him. Franklin Khan is the new Lenny Saith.
Hinds should have taken a back seat.
In the corporate world 3/4 of PNM hopefulls would not get pass the first stage of an interview.
PNM comes up with great ideas, but it's falls on the waste side, they not mature enough to carry out these ideas.
I think Imbert is being overlooked and underrated by PNM.
As we all know the PNM is the best party when they out of office.
RASC wrote:UNC Facebook hott with cuss words.
They're literally ripping into Gypsy...all who "ALWAYS KNEW HE WAS NO GOOD"
I have never seen a place so rife with verbal violence and venom in words with anyone who opposes them. It's very similar to how you see them talking here. Is it a cultural thing within the UNC for the men to behave such effeminate?
Women I expect to be bitter and whiney-but men?
Kewell35 wrote:RASC wrote:UNC Facebook hott with cuss words.
They're literally ripping into Gypsy...all who "ALWAYS KNEW HE WAS NO GOOD"
I have never seen a place so rife with verbal violence and venom in words with anyone who opposes them. It's very similar to how you see them talking here. Is it a cultural thing within the UNC for the men to behave such effeminate?
Women I expect to be bitter and whiney-but men?
Like Faris teach them
UML wrote:
zoom rader wrote:^^^ When the word PNM comes up one automatically links it to a blackman party. People see PNM as being hostile and Wajang and anti indo . When you think PNM you associate it with Laventille and Beetham
What can be done to change this is that they need to start to distance itself from these little black groups and stop pandering to those con artists.
Remember when PNM linked and funded itself to the kaiso tents to produce anti indo songs.
Look at the difference when they had their had their "discussion " in Sando West, do they have a discussion in Beetham.
As I stated they position indo candidates in non PNM safe seats. How does this look, it's shows they still on this blackman party thing and ppl are seeing this.
EFFECTIC DESIGNS wrote:^ I hear Rowley saying Monday night that he gave Avinash Singh his word that he won't turn his back on him should he lose his seat. He says its the dawn of a new PNM so I guess we go see.
rfari wrote:zoom rader wrote:^^^ When the word PNM comes up one automatically links it to a blackman party. People see PNM as being hostile and Wajang and anti indo . When you think PNM you associate it with Laventille and Beetham
What can be done to change this is that they need to start to distance itself from these little black groups and stop pandering to those con artists.
Remember when PNM linked and funded itself to the kaiso tents to produce anti indo songs.
Look at the difference when they had their had their "discussion " in Sando West, do they have a discussion in Beetham.
As I stated they position indo candidates in non PNM safe seats. How does this look, it's shows they still on this blackman party thing and ppl are seeing this.EFFECTIC DESIGNS wrote:^ I hear Rowley saying Monday night that he gave Avinash Singh his word that he won't turn his back on him should he lose his seat. He says its the dawn of a new PNM so I guess we go see.
ED is correct. After the chagwest by-elections avinash has been an opposition senator. The question to be asked is were these "indo candidates in non PNM safe seats" were the best candidates available during screening.
Pandering to little black groups like what? PNM has pandered to many groups including unc's core support. If ppls perception is that pnm = beetham and laventille nothing can change that. That seed has been planted in ur head
PNM’s Last Chance
Published on March 5, 2014 in Elections, General T&T, Opposition Party, PNM and Politics. 6 Comments
Tags: Keith Rowley, Politics, Selwyn R. Cudjoe, T&T Govt.
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 05, 2014
Part 1
A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones—and South Africa treated its imprisoned African citizens like animals.
—Nelson Mandela
Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI am pretty certain that Keith Rowley will emerge victorious during the PNM’s party election and go on to become the next prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Fortunately, that is the easy part of the political equation. The more difficult part is to govern in such a way that the society emerges in a better place than it is in 2014. That’s the challenge PNM faces when it takes the helm of government. However, if Rowley and the PNM fail to leave Trinidad (and especially our brothers and sisters in our depressed areas) in a better way than they found them in 2014, one can confidently predict that 2020 would mark the beginning of the end of the PNM as a political force in our country.
PNM has contributed much to our society. Therefore it stands to reason that if the party accepts praises for the good things that have happened, it must also accept its share of blame for the bad things. If the society is more crime-ridden today than it was yesterday, the PNM must accept its share of the blame for such a condition. It does not do any good to blame the PP (the People’s Partnership) for the state of crime in the society since both parties share in the blame.
The PNM must accept that the party has failed the country in how it has treated the least amongst us: that is, the people of Laventille, Morvant, Sea Lots, Maloney, and the other depressed areas that are predominantly black. If the party wishes to be a relevant entity after 2020, it must stop the downward slide in which these people find themselves and work towards creating a more equitable society where they feel they have a stake in the society and that Trinidad and Tobago is as much theirs as it is ours.
If PNM wishes to make the society more livable, it must make the community the center of all social and political development. It is an opportunity which the PNM rejected and one that has come back to haunt all of us. In 1989 Joel Krieger, a colleague of mine in the political science department at Wellesley College, and I wrote PNM’s 20/20 Vision Statement (it was adopted at the 1989 PNM Convention) the one thing we stressed (but could not get Patrick Manning to agree with) was the principle of community control as the foundation of our social development.
We argued then—and I have continued to do so consistently—that if colonialism involved the control of the society by the governor and an executive council who worked for the benefit of the British Crown, then independence—and later republicanism—must involve a radical overthrowing of that order and placing the control of the society in the hands of the community. Today people must work for themselves and the enhancement of others. The community must become the fulcrum around which our social and political system revolves.
In today’s world, government officials are slowly realizing that the communities are the key to solving many of our problems. A week ago Garry McCarthy, the police chief of Chicago, Illinois, the murder capital of the United States, attributed the drop in the murder rate in Chicago (the murder rate dropped by 18 percent in 2013, the lowest level in fifty years), to the role of community policing and the provision of more social services and amenities for the “worst neighborhoods” in his city.
Speaking about the success of his efforts, McCarthy noted that “the department was structured around community rather than citywide policing, resources were shifted to the most dangerous areas through more spending on overtime, and merit—based promotion for commanders was introduced” (FinancialTimes, February 18, 2014). The police department, he said, had done a “gang audit” and identified “every member, every territory and every conflict in the Chicago’s entrenched gang culture.”What he did not mention was his department’s close working relationship with the community.
Crime however does not exist in a vacuum. Sociologists have attributed increased crime in these black areas to the high levels of unemployment that exists there. Heidi Shierholz, a labor market economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington D.C. noted that for seventy years black unemployment had been twice that of white workers. She says: “It’s hard not to use the word ‘depression’ when you’re describing the labor market conditions among African Americans now” (FT, February 17, 2014).
Part 2
On February 28, in light of the catastrophic conditions among young black men in the US, President Barack Obama announced an initiative to empower them. He stated that the country should do more to show these young men “that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them.” He emphasized that government needed “to partner with communities and police to reduce violence and make our classrooms and streets safer. And we need to help these young men stay in school and find a good job—so they have an opportunity to reach their full potential, contribute to their communities and build decent lives for themselves and their families” (New York Times, February 27, 2014). He also called on the non-profits to assist him in achieving his objectives.
For fifteen years the National Association for the Empowerment of African People of Trinidad and Tobago (NAEAP) has been urging our government to partner with local black organizations to alleviate the conditions of black communities and black youths but to no avail. We established a school, conducted seminars, held summer classes and gave evening lessons. We offered national lectures but never received any assistance from the government or prominent blacks in our communities. Today that neglect continues to haunt us.
To make matters worse, it seemed to us that Mr. Manning had an intractable fear of Sat Maharaj, and the PNM feared to be associated too visibly with anything black. In the early 2000s I sent a memo to Mr. Manning recommending that there be an educational component in every CEPEP program. I made that recommendation knowing that not every participant in the CPEP program would learn to read and write but remained convinced that if the children of a CEPEP worker saw his or her parents reading and writing, they were more likely to want to do the same. Fear of what the PP or Sat would say prevented the PNM from incorporating this very worthwhile idea into its public works program.
The PNM has an obligation to work to raise up those who have received least from society’s abundance. Afro-Trinidadians from the depressed segments have been the backbone of the PNM but have not received as much as they have given to the PNM. The PNM has been so afraid of being labeled “racist” that it has done little to enhance the well-being of those who need their assistance the most. Today, the outcome is clear: you either empower black people, starting from the base of their communities, or the society will pay a high price for such neglect.
Mr. Rowley should also guard against a related tendency among the PNM hierarchy. On Election Day, come hell or high water, the people of Laventille, Morvant, and other such areas turn out faithfully to support PNM. Once the party gets into power a special select few who usually surround the leader profit most from the party’s victory by way of contracts, special favors, etc., while the poor and downtrodden, faithful to the end, go back their homes, hoping that things will be better this time around.
Mr. Rowley will have to remember the importance of an organized party in achieving the party’s objectives, particularly with regard to black people. When C. L. R. James left the party in 1961 (or was he thrown out?), he emphasized that the party must be controlled by its members. He noted: “A party leader has constantly to ask himself: If I am struck down tomorrow (or shot down) what will happen to my program? The answer is not in individuals but in a solidly organized party” (Party Politics in the West Indies, 54).
James realized that an organized party was indispensible for the achievement of the party’s objectives. He observed: “It is the organized party which alone can assure success against the most powerful enemies. It is the power of the organized party which will bring to the party young and educated elements who are so conspicuously missing [from the party]… Periodical exhortations and denunciations by the political Leader will not organize the party” (Ibid., 60—1). It is a warning of which we need to be aware as we prepare for government.
The PNM also has to be careful about its tendency to glorify “the political leader.” We do not even refer to him by his name but by his title. Party members ought to remember that we serve Keith Rowley or Penny Beckles when we insist on the centrality of the party in formulating policies and practicing consistent democracy within the party. The leader of the party articulates the party’s views and inspires us to greater heights. Ultimately, the leader is not the party: he or she represents the concentrated expression of the party’s aspirations which he or she is bound to respect.
On May 28 I will support Keith Rowley’s candidacy for the leadership of the PNM as I did in those not-so-glorious days of 1996 when he challenged Mr. Manning for the leadership of the party. However, I would be lacking in patriotic sentiments if I did not remind my party of the debt it owes to its most faithful followers and the need to stop taking their loyalty for granted. I may be wrong, but I think the fortunes of the party will rise and fall on how it treats this important segment of the party. As the old folks used to say, “A word to the wise is sufficient.”
Selwyn R. Cudjoe is a member of Party Group 12, Tunapuna Constituency. He can be reached at scudjoe@wellesley.edu and tweet @ProfessorCudjoe.
I have been trying to digest Selwyn Cudjoe’s two-part column published in the Express over Carnival. I find it to be strong on prediction, but weak on evidence or analysis. He said he is “certain” that Rowley will win the PNM internal elections and then go on to win the national elections. But he does not provide the basis of this bold and positive prediction. This is Selwyn Cudjoe as high priest, playing the role of soothsayer who can summon uncommon powers of prescience that bring the future to the present, thereby allowing his leader to conserve cognitive resources and shoe sole that he might otherwise expend as he tries to win back the elections for his party.
Indeed there are elections to be fought in this country, within the PNM, and then among the populace at large. They are not pro forma. Rowley could lose them both, if he looks past them and is perceived to be so doing by PNM supporters or potential PNM voters. He has to make his case to PNM supporters and to the public as leader, and these two elections provide him the opportunities to do so.
It was arrogance on the part of Manning, and a false feeling that he was divinely protected, that caused him basically to hand over the state, with two years to go. Manning had gone too far in front of his party. When he looked back on election day they were not there. The corridor was gone. As was Tobago.
Now comes Prof Cudjoe, as though none of this ever occurred, and he tells Rowley to start planning for what he would do for black people the next time, especially in hotspot communities where black people dwell, such as Laventille, and Maloney, constituencies the PNM were left with after the last elections.
It seems to me that Mr. Rowley would be better off if he takes Ms Penelope Beckles challenge seriously, and fights the internal PNM elections with real gusto. This is not the first test of his fitness for leading the party. The evidence is that he has been intellectually engaged in this, and that when the time came whether it was Section 34, or the host of other PP mishaps and misdeeds, he pounced, with good results. The PNM has done well in elections in the interim—in Tobago, St, Joseph, and in local elections. Rowley must communicate that Ms Beckles is a worthy contender, with whom he can have a civil debate about vision and priorities for the party. He cannot do less.
Prof Cudjoe’s main thesis is that this time around, if the PNM do not connect directly with the black electorate this would be its last chance. In particular, he focuses on the hot spot communities. He writes: “The PNM must accept that the party has failed the country in how it has treated the least amongst us: that is, the people of Laventille, Morvant, Sea Lots, Maloney, and the other depressed areas that are predominantly black.” I hear what Prof Cudjoe is saying with this point, and I will come back to this question of race and the PNM. But maybe Prof Cudjoe does not fathom properly what happened the last time. And it is that the PNM lost the corridor and Tobago. The party lost Arima, Toco-Sangre Grande, D’Abadie/O’Omeara, La Horquetta/Talparo, Tunapuna, St Augustine, Barataria, and St Ann’s East. It also lost Tobago East and Tobago-West. Plus Moruga, Fyzabad, and Mayaro.
So what happened in the last election is that the base of the PNM was washed away. This is bigger, much bigger than crime hot spots. This is also the middle class black person, fed up with crime, and wanting solutions. This is the elderly black woman wanting to get up at five o ’clock to go to mass, and afraid that she will be held imperilled.
As to the question of race, it is the case that party politics in this country was founded on ethnic strivings. The authority here is Morton Klass, who in his seminal study “East and West Indian: Cultural Complexity in Trinidad”, explained how the politics of the 1940s derived its outlines from the two ethnic poles in the plural society. Indians wanted to maintain their ethnic identity, and retreated to cultural enclaves after trading in the market place. Africans with looser bonds with ancestry favoured the Creole society.
The two groups mixed but did not combine, consistent with the theory of cultural pluralism as set forth by Furnivall. Both groups looked to their own for political leadership. This is our history. We must not be ashamed of it. We did not have Democrats and Republicans here as in the US. Nor Conservatives and Labourites as in the UK.
We had Africans and Indians, politics based on the ethnic outcomes of colonialism that can be seen in Malaysia, for example. We were defined politically here by the slave trade and indenture-ship. On the whole we have done remarkably as a nation, accepting each other and respecting each other’s rights.
As to black aspirations and the PNM, I think Prof Cudjoe has a point when he says that the party has sometimes been unclear in its message, for fear that it will be assessed to be race-based. A Peoples’ National Movement has to include not just Africans but all the races. The question though has to be what group constitutes the PNM base? The UNC in its various iterations whether PDP, ULF, or DLP, has never been unclear about this. Bhadase Maraj and now Sat Maharaj have told us loud and clear what is that base. Basdeo Panday said it was “sugar workers”. We could dance around this, employ euphemisms, or call each other racist, but we cannot deny history. It is the case that the PNM has been somewhat more shy than, say, the UNC, in naming or clarifying what is its base.
A final word here has to do with crime and dysfunction in the black community. Yes the PNM has to own up to some of this. But black people also have to take up our own beds and walk. Manning did not make anybody a criminal. Just like Obama did not make the young brother on the streets of Chicago a criminal. People make themselves criminals.
It is the case though that the absence of fathers or father figures in the black home, a perennial problem does not help. A grandmother or working mother is not a match for the gang leader on the block with his bundles of cash, and sexy girls, in convincing a 16-year-old youth to make the right choice between his mathematics homework or riding in a stolen car in which there are other black youth, one or more guns, and a Movado or Vibes Kartel sound track.
But there are choices that beat early death. Some African brothers sell nuts on the highway. Many work at the various ministries. I see young brothers selling yams and fish in Arima market. The Bravo brothers play cricket. Bunji and Machel followed their entertainment passions. Machel has O’ Levels. Sunil Narine plays cricket in India. I see my Indian brothers selling coconuts, and doubles. We can learn from this. I reject outright that black people are helpless against criminality.
The PNM must not pander to young black men who are criminals, and who love jobs that start at 7 a.m. and end at 8 a.m. If you make a CEPEP recipient literate, as Cudjoe says, how do you convince him to get out of CEPEP? Look at young black sisters. They are in school, and at the university, where the young black male is missing, here and in Jamaica. I think we need social policy and programmes, such as youth apprenticeship that focus on skill training, that engage black youth in their critical transition years between adolescence and adulthood. But murder is not a natural response to poverty.
This long after slavery, we have black men still, who believe they came on this earth to impregnate black sisters and to walk away. That is the reason why the black community is crime infested. It is not poverty alone, it is young boys who become men too soon, running communities at 16, a job that pundits, imams, the Chamber of Commerce and Kiwanis, with grown men, take on in other communities.
Theodore Lewis is professor
emeritus, University of Minnesota, USA.
RASC wrote:Has anyone noticed how the UNC Campaign has fallen off tremendously since Rodney Charles was named as Naparima candidate
He get he safe seat, sing for his supper and now everything groovy. How foolish can you be to select a candidate who has to do walk abouts etc and STILL run your campaign?
UML wrote:UML wrote:
UML wrote:
dumb cane cutters
UML wrote:
Man condone it. Never said it was wrong. Maybe it is their culture.
rfari wrote:UML wrote:
dumb cane cutters
He was commenting on howai's denial of the reintroduction of property tax
UML wrote:
Man condone it. Never said it was wrong. Maybe it is their culture.
UML wrote:rfari wrote:UML wrote:
dumb cane cutters
He was commenting on howai's denial of the reintroduction of property tax
you hadda just as "smart" as she to believe that.
How could he know what Howai feels? He is reflecting his own personal opinion as someone else's
stop trying to fool ppl....not everyone like the PNM sheep!!!UML wrote:
Man condone it. Never said it was wrong. Maybe it is their culture.
so it was right then if he didnt say it was wrong and criticised them. He said it is a cultural thing.
Return to “Ole talk and more Ole talk”
Users browsing this forum: Google Adsense [Bot], matr1x and 61 guests
