The Manicou Report

Archive for July, 2006

The Chief Justice Report

Thursday, July 27th, 2006

*First of all I want to apologise for my lack of blogging over the past weeks. I’ve been working on my template which has been fighting me back at every step. I’m not done yet, but at least I have a better sidebar to show for it.

Sat Sharma

The truth is I don’t know whether the Chief Justice is guilty or innocent. I find myself these days not caring very much about it either. I do, however, find myself feeling very tense about the whole situation. It doesn’t help that the people embroiled in this matter and those who are trying to become embroiled don’t instil any confidence in me. I don’t know the Chief Justice from Adam. He’s not my uncle, my lawyer or my next door neighbour. In Trinidad however, that doesn’t disqualify anyone from offering a half-baked, uninformed opinion on what he should do. Right now, everybody and their barber is an expert on the criminal justice. And my question is why?

The only two people who really know all the facts of this case are Chief Magistrate Sherman Mc Nichols and the Chief Justice himself. As far as I’m concerned, everybody else is a day late and a dollar short. All the Johnny-come-lately experts are pitting one man’s word against another and deciding for themselves what is truth, irregardless of due process. But in Trinidad, dat eh stopping nobody. Who doh say he should resign, say the Government persecuting him. Meanwhile, I sit here jealous of their telepathic abilities. Honestly, I’m in awe. There is no “wait and see”, there’s no “due course”. I guess we should thank Mr. Patrick “resign or be charged” Manning for that.

As know the facts of the case, but the very last thing I call for is for the CJ to resign - unless of course he knows that he is guilty. All the people who are saying, “yeah he should resign, he making the office look bad” probably haven’t stopped to consider the possibility that the man may be innocent. Resign for what? The man hasn’t been convicted of any crime. What if he were to go to court only to be found innocent? Then what? Who’s going to give him his job back? Are those same people going to be so vociferous in calling for him to be reinstated? Unlikely.

And of course there are the polar opposites to those mentioned before who say that he is being persecuted and the Government should back off him, which is equally as asinine. A few weeks ago I accused another Trinidadian blogger of jumping to conclusions and alluded that she was allowing race to cloud her thinking. Apparently she didn’t see it that way and subsequently (or not) she chose to delete her bog or at least move it to somewhere where rational thinking wasn’t required. I wish she had stayed around to duke it out with me. I could always use a good argument. In the blogosphere you have to be prepared to defend what you say and well, as it turns out, not every position is tenable. Ah well.

Basdeo Panday

Joining the call to stop the alleged persecution of the Chief Justice is none other but the Pied Piper himself, Basdeo Panday. In case you haven’t read the Internet Express this morning, Mr. Panday is in pre-conviction blabber-mouth form. When asked what he thought of the President’s statement, said he, “His speech was a shame and a disgrace”. (Wow). In any case, its hard to recall anyone ever ripping into a president the way Mr. Panday has. But wait, there’s more. The Express reports:

Asked what he thought Richards should have done, Panday said he (Richard’s) should have kept his “mouth shut in the first place”.

Panday said if Richards wanted to say something, then he should have met with Prime Minister Patrick Manning and told him to stop the persecution of Chief Justice Sat Sharma.

He said the Government was trying to attack the public justice system in a process that “reeks of racism”…

…He noted though, that Richards was “part and parcel” of the Government that wants to control the judiciary, as they have done with respect to the police force.

Comissioner Trevor Paul

By the way, this comes from the man who knows disgrace. So all you nay sayers out there who think Mr. Panday is getting on his high horse, you should shut your mouth too. Mr. Panday knows everything there is to know about disgrace. He’s gone from Prime Minister to jailbird-on-bail. Mr. Panday is even an expert on keeping one’s mouth shut. Who else but Mr. Panday knows how much better it is to keep his mouth shut that to be successfully sued for libel? Don’t hold back Mr. Panday. Tell us how you really feel.

While this doesn’t “reek” of racism, it does reek of Mr. Panday attempting to re-unite the UNC. What bothers me most about that statement (without surprising me) is how this matter has turned into an issue of race. In Trinidadian politics, the easiest way to rally supporters is to insist that there are some people who hate them, but you are not one of them. It has worked before and I guess it can work again.

Even though I have no real opinion on the CJ’s guilt or innocence, there are some things that bother me, though. Call them “nagging questions” if you will.

I am bothered by the gusto with which the Government is tackling this issue. If they decided to tackle vagrancy, crime, the drug scourge and infrastructure problems with the same zeal, man, Trinidad would be a much nicer place. Just imagine how it would be if the Police Commissioner launched a no-holds-barred offensive against crime. Could you imagine what our crime rate would be like now? Imagine if the Commissioner were to say that there was “nothing that could stop him” from doing his duty to rid Trinidad and Tobago of crime and drugs. I get goose bumps thinking about it. By the way, did you know the T&T Police Service has a website?
If the Chief Magistrate is innocent, why is he afraid of going before the very court that he presides over. Is he saying that the court is inherently corrupt and there is no way that he can get a fair trial? This is his court. Why is he reluctant to be tried in it? Surely he doesn’t think that injunctions are going to make the whole issue just disappear. If he’s afraid, then what about the average man in the streets? If I were an innocent man being wrongfully accused, I would dust of my calculator and invite my lawyer over for dinner so he could help me calculate damages. All in all it sounds like a bad version of The Minority Report

At the end of it all I just wish that the CJ submits himself to the course of justice just like everyone else sooner or later has to. If he’s innocent, then I hope he fights tooth and nail to expose his oppressors, and if he’s guilty, well….

Posted in Justice, PNM, Politics, UNC | No Comments »

Is President Richards Granddad?

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

President Richards & Granddad

I realize that this may be entirely me, but does anyone else think that President George Maxwell Richards looks like Granddad from The Boondocks? In any case I hope he negotiates with his belt.

Posted in Humour, Politics | 3 Comments »

President Gives Nation Giant Meggie

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

President Richards

…urgent action must be taken!……I’ll tell you about it later (Psych!)

OK, he didn’t say it exactly like this, but I reserve the right to paraphrase as I see fit. He did use the word “revert” though which in Trini translates to “jus now nah”.

Mr. President, revert to us now. Please! No wait for future. Tell them play nice.

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »

Me in parlour 15 minutes ago…

Monday, July 24th, 2006

Me: Yeah, good evenin’ gimme ah Solo please
Shop Boy: Wha flava yuh want?
Me: Wha allyuh have?
Shop Boy: It ha red, yellow, black, purple, clear…

???

Only in Trinidad, can you describe a flavour as a colour.

Posted in Humour, Personal Story | 2 Comments »

Straight From the UNC Message Boards

Saturday, July 22nd, 2006

I warn you, this post is very long, which is a good reason why I shouldn’t hold stuff in. That having been said, start with the quote below.

Click to See Quote on the Original Page

So I was perusing the UNC website yesterday morning for two reasons. I wanted to research a sneaking suspicion I had, and also I wanted a glimpse of what UNC supporters were thinking. I do have a friend who’s a supporter, but two weeks ago I decided he was a complete idiot. It’s not that I don’t respect another man’s opinion, but he has changed considerably from when we were in secondary school together and….well, that’s another story altogether.

Needless to say, I needed a fresh serving of opinion. So I checked in on the message boards to

Black Caucus That statement with that kind of sentiment does not bear repeating by any respected individual save for the purpose of condemning it. Mr. Ramsaran was not condemning it, instead he gave it a voice. He didn’t dismiss it as racist or offensive, but he gave it legs.

see what the web-savvy people were thinking and my, my, my. By the way, the PNM website doesn’t have a message board (at least not one that I could locate) so I couldn’t pull it up for comparison. The UNC board, however really makes you sit up straight when you take in how foolish people can be towards race and politics. Take for example the quote I screen-captured from one of the threads. The post, submitted by someone under the name “YuhCyahSee”, quite reprehensibly refers to afro-Trinidadians as “stupid creoles”. Isn’t it possible for someone to support their party without referring to people as “stupid creoles”? I imagine that the UNC website has webmasters and the message board has moderators. Yet this post has been up since April 24th of this year.

I didn’t stay very much longer on the site because things like that get me riled up. I begin questioning why people are so stupid and I can never so much as surmise a guess. It doesn’t have much to do with my post today, so I’m going to leave this here and go on to why I really went on the UNC website.

A while back, former UNC minister Manohar Ramsaran made an absolutely ridiculous statement concerning the alleged “black caucus” that was ruling the UNC. In his statement he referred to Jack Warner as the one who was the main financier of the party and also to Daphne Phillip who moved the motion to discipline UNC political leader Winston Dookeran. These facts, he stated, were evidence of that “black caucus” within the party that was “calling the shots”.

Manohar Ramsaran

Now Mr. Ramsaran has apologised for the statement, but at the same time insisted that he was only repeating what he had heard others say. Granted he heard it somewhere else, but his stupidity came in repeating it. That statement with that kind of sentiment does not bear repeating by any respected individual save for the purpose of condemning it. Mr. Ramsaran was not condemning it, instead he gave it a voice. He didn’t dismiss it as racist or offensive, but he gave it legs. I believe without a doubt that Mr. Ramsaran knew it was inflammatory. And he would not have repeated it himself had he not thought there was some truth to it.

Now you might think that this is all old news, but the reason I am rehashing all of this is because of this Express news story yesterday in which Kamla is quoted as saying that it was the aim of the UNC all along to have Panday return to an active role in the UNC i.e. reclaim the role of party chairman.

Panday the DestroyerIt was Mr. Panday himself who destroyed the UNC. It was his undisclosed London bank account that caused the debacle. In the body of one man lay both creator and destroyer of the UNC.

This is why the UNC with its current makeup of Jack Warner and Kamla Persad Bissessar worries me. Mr. Panday is damaged goods. He’s a politician who could have done great things for his country but instead wound up with a conviction for corruption. At the trial, he offered nothing but shoddy excuses. He was subsequently jailed and fined pending an appeal.

Mr. Panday has nothing more to give to this country except a bad name. But this is the man that Kamla & Co. want to put back into a position of power. And to all those who will say “oh, well, it’s the PNM conspiracy, and they persecuted him”. Give me a break. While they were over zealous in prosecuting him, they didn’t make him sign a false declaration. Maybe some are gullible enough to believe that the money was a gift from Mr. Duprey, but not I. Denial isn’t a river in Africa. If you want to be honest and if you want to cut the bullshit, it wasn’t Mr. Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj who betrayed the UNC, it was Mr. Panday himself. It was his undisclosed London bank account that caused the debacle. In the body of one man lay both creator and destroyer of the UNC.

Then, what disdain could you have for the people of this country that you take that same washed up tainted politician, dust him off and then put him back into a position of power? It blows my mind to see what passes for politics in this country.

Basdeo Panday

Is that really the best they can do? To give to us a corrupt politician and Mr. Twist-Mouth Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj? People like this will never survive in American politics. They’ll be chewed up and spit out for lack of credibility. But here for some reason they thrive. It’s shameful actually. But who’s the real victim here? It’s T&T.

The reason I brought up both Mr. Ramsaran and Mr. Panday was to compare the two incidents as perceived by the UNC. In Mr. Ramsaran’s case, his statement brought swift reprimand from the executive. The UNC issued a statement saying :

The UNC wishes to stress that there has never been such a sinister block within the party. In fact, both the UNC’s stated policy and track record of performance indicate a recognition and utilisation of human resources based on skill, talent and other valued merits, and not on ethnicity or any other subjective or discriminatory factors. Indeed, the UNC is the only genuine rainbow party in Trinidad and Tobago, truly reflective and appreciative of the diversity and miscellany of our blessed nation.

I wonder how YuhCyahSee feels about that statement. In addition, they said:

Click to view on its Original Web Page

Unless you’re three years old, don’t be fooled by this condemnation of Mr. Ramsaran. I wonder if in the eyes of the current UNC, Mr. Ramsaran’s only sin is that he is a supporter of Mr. Dookeran. Had he been their supporter, do you think a statement like that would have received such a public and harsh reprimand? In Trinidad, political parties have a strong tradition of looking the other way when it comes to in-party sins and the UNC is no different. What else could explain the phenomenon that Mr. Panday has been tried, convicted and sentenced for effectively lying about a foreign account and yet did not receive a similar reprimand from the UNC hierarchy?

Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Not only did he not receive a reprimand, but nowhere on the entire site is there even a mention that Mr. Panday has had legal trouble of any sort except for the comments of laymen on the message boards. So in case you’re not keeping score: talking about the “black caucus” - bad, lying about a London bank account - bravo and may I add, encore.

If it happens that Franklin Khan and Eric Williams are also convicted, don’t expect a public reprimand either. They won’t be lambasted unless they’re deemed “rouge PNMites”. But the Kamlas and Warners of the world undoubtedly think they impress us when they criticize “the racist”. Kamla, do you want to impress us? Criticize Basdeo Panday for lying about a bank account. Do you want to show us that you are a fearless leader? Tell us that Mr. Panday, because of his long association with politics and having been Prime Minister, “ought to know much better”. Do you want to demonstrate that you’ll be tough on crime? Then condemn crime - even if it’s among your own ranks. Because everything else - including all those meaningless reprimands - is just smoke, mirrors and mamaguy.

Posted in Crime, PNM, Politics, Race, UNC | 2 Comments »

Lesson #1: How to tell you’ve been an Accessory to Crime

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

Sometimes it’s easy to figure this out incidentally just by conversation.

Ruffian: (enthusiastically) Ay! Ay! Padna!
Me: (I look up decidedly less enthusiastically) Ay. What going on?

The Ruffian is in his twenties - the kind of guy who has many aliases but no name. He is walking towards me but is still a ways off and is flagging down taxis that pass by. He is selling something from the bucket he is toting. However, the two taxis he succeeds in stopping aren’t interested and drive off. He finally approaches me with the bucket.

Ruffian: Yeah, is the last bottle ah have here.

He pulls out a Blue Mountain water bottle that contains a murky liquid.

Ruffian: $7
Me: Daiz ok, ah go drink water home.
Ruffian: Nah, nah is coconut water - the last bottle.

Chenet

It looks like coconut water, and I hold back from expressing the obvious hygeine concerns.

Me: Ok.

I grudgingly hand over my $7.

Me: I thought it was chenet yuh was selling again. Dem chenet was real sweet dread.

Ruffian: Nah boy. Yuh see the woman come home and ketch we and start to get on for she tree and ting. Then she call the police for we and they wanted to lock we up and all kinna ting. So I tell she sorry and I didn’t mean no disrespect.

Should I go surrender now or get an injunction?

Posted in Humour, Personal Story | No Comments »

Alderman Ramesh Ramdhan

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

Ramesh Ramdhan

“Some people were surprised when I accepted the position because of the ongoing situation in the UNC. But the confidence I have in Jack Warner was instrumental in my decision and I also see it as another way of working with the young people in T&T.”

- Alderman Ramesh Ramdhan

Ok, you lost me at “Jack Warner”.

Posted in Politics, UNC | 1 Comment »