On the Fourth Day of Elections
Monday, October 29th, 2007 |
On the Third Day of Elections, my Emperor gave to me:
4 Breakfastses
3 Smelters Smelting
2 Blimp what need fixing
And a Cepep wuk down in Caroni.
Archive for October, 2007
On the Third Day of Elections
Saturday, October 27th, 2007 |
On the Third Day of Elections, my Emperor gave to me:
3 Smelters Smelting
2 Blimp what need fixing
And a Cepep wuk down in Caroni.
On the Second Day of Elections
Friday, October 26th, 2007 |
On the Second Day of Elections, my Emperor gave to me:
2 Blimp what need fixing
And a Cepep wuk down in Caroni.
But a a, as I writing guess what I hear in the sky? I just had to snap a picture. Ladies and Gentlemen, seen the blimp in your area recently? Snap a pic and I’ll gladly post it here on The Manicou Report…and while we’re at it, snap pictures of any political ad, banner, poster and I’ll post them too. I think I killed two birds with one stone today.
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| A Sighting of the recently repaired “crimefighter”. |
My Friend Ramesh
Friday, October 26th, 2007First of all. To all the UNC supporters out there. Is this man Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj really what you want? Ramesh who you perceive to have brought down the UNC government the last time and then has the audacity to say that that’s all a lie. So why did he get thrown out of the party? But that’s beside my point. I figure if people are still going to vote for the UNC after that then they’ve left no room for reason.
My concern is why would Patrick Manning come out and say that at this juncture. Manning can’t possibly think that he stands to benefit directly from his statement. He’s most likely thinking (and hoping) that:
- The COP has put a negligible dent into the following of the UNC.
- The number of undecided voters coming over to the COP is minuscule and at the very least, unproven.
- The UNC thus still poses a big enough threat to grab power from the PNM.
- He needs to level the playing field a little between the UNC and the COP.
The only thing Mr. Manning didn’t say was, “Remember what Ramesh do allyuh, vote COP!” Mr. Manning must think that in order for him to win this war, he must help the COP win the battle between themselves and the UNC.
That’s the only thing I can think of. Anyone else have a theory?
On the 1st Day of Elections
Friday, October 26th, 2007 |
On the first day of elections my Emperor gave to me.
- A Cepep wuk down in Caroni
Cutting Cane
Friday, October 26th, 2007 |
No Love For The Yout’ Dem
Friday, October 19th, 2007I read today that both the UNC Alliance and the People’s National Movement blanked the Youth Forum hosted on Wednesday at the Normandie Hotel. They blanked it big time too. Neither of the aforementioned parties sent a single representative to the forum to hear the concerns of the youth.
The Congress of the People showed up however sending not just a representative, but its political leader Winston Dookeran. The members of the forum took the opportunity to hand over their manifesto to Mr. Dookeran where it detailed the top ten issues that were of concern to the youth which were: crime, employment, health, education, abuse, housing, family life, equal opportunity, corruption and abuse of power. The manifesto was the product of a survey conducted during a Youth Voter Awareness Campaign organized by the Network of NGOs for the Advancement of Women from August 6 to August 11, 2007.
Now it’s bad enough that neither the UNC-A or the PNM attended, but something stuck me as very odd this morning. Just yesterday this ad appeared in the Express:
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| Advertisement for UNC’s Youth Vibes Rally |
So let’s get this straight. The UNC-A would rather promote a passa passa fete than to meet with the youth of the nation to discuss real issues?
Get your tickets now, folks for the Youth Vibes Rally featuring man like Richie Spice, man like King David, man like Gitta Dan.
Isn’t there something terribly wrong with this picture?
I cringe when I think of the meeting where this decision was made. Yeah, why don’t we hold a “Youth Vibes Rally” with a lot of reggae start. I hear the kids like that kind of thing”. Sheesh.
Part of me wants to believe that it was merely an oversight, but I refuse to think that the youth of the nation can be so easily forgotten. Notice on that same flier there is no mention of issues or speakers. It is all out fete.
Is that their perception of the youth? Partiers and limers who have no interest in issues? My word!
A Reply To JohnBoy
Sunday, October 14th, 2007You know, most times when I get a comment that I feel is unwarranted, I try to sleep on it before I respond. The reason I wait is that I want to avoid the usual first reaction denouncing the criticizer. The next day I’m usually able to respectfully disagree with my accuser and/or accept all accusation as truth. Many times I find that I misread the comment or misconstrued the tone of the criticism. So a lot of the time I am glad I chose to wait till the next day before replying.
A couple days ago I get the following comments from JohnBoy - a semi-frequent commenter on my blog.
Yea Mani, ya know I is a man following your blog here for de longest. I use it to get a pulse of TnT. After I just make a trod down to de rock, I have to say you typify what is wrong wid Trini. My ppl have no sense of basic understanding of economics or from a macro view or human social view. You complaining bout this and that and by no means is Trinidad a perfect place. My view however is that most of the problems lie with the population of Trinidad. Is Trinidadians who committing crime right? That is the first thing ppl does say how crime so bad. It bad! But who committing crime? And I never get a chance to respond to the idiot who say Panday was de best Prime Minister Trinidad ever had. Doh mean to call him an idiot but wha really get mih is that you agreed. Of course u entitled to your own opinion. Hell is your blog! But when as a supposedly educated fella make statements that support stupidity I will choose to voice my disdain in your blog if you would allow me. Basdeo Panday was de best allya say? Now I know for sure that there is pandemic of amnesia down on de rock! Basdeo Panday ya say? Mani, I cant say I expect better from u cuz I doh know ya personally, but Basdeo Panday was de best?
De talk is about creeping dictatorship. So when a leader decide he party need new blood and he decide to make changes he is a dictator right? Because he have to make decisions not everybody like. Ya mean like when Panday get rid of Ramesh who was telln him but de corruption going on in de UNC. Ya mean like dat? Thanks to tha best Prime Minister in TnT we had a splintering of the NAR, to form tha UNC and then de UNC splinter again to form COP and one name keep reappering in de middle. Well yes! De best Prime Minister. I was reading all these months but didnt feel qualified to say nutten until ah touch down on de rock and after havn done so ah seeing how one set a ppl here talkn a set assness! Ah have 1 question: Ah want anybody here tell me how many nations among the G10 offers their citizens free tertiary education? G10 is “considered” to be 10 of the world’s richest nations for anybody not in de know.
The Basdeo Panday thing I can forgive him for somewhat. Other people also seemed to misunderstand Ed’s comment so I’ll go over it briefly. Someone named John commented on my post “Indecent Proposal” saying, “Everyone knows that he is the best Prime Minister Trinidad ever had during 1995-2001.” Ed responded to that saying, “Have to agree with John. Panday was definitely Trinidad’s best Prime Minister between 1995 and 2001.” I have to admit that I was a little puzzled by that statement coming from Ed seeing that he’s the same person who keeps asking why Bas is not in jail. Then I realized that Ed had picked up on the silliness of the statement itself. Bas was the “best Prime Minister Trinidad ever had during 1995-2001″ because he was the only PM during that period. I remarked to Ed later in that post that I got his joke and in my post “A Letter to John” I said this:”Ed agreed with you when you said that Panday was the best Prime Minister Trinidad ever had during 1995-2001. Let me say that I agree with you too. No other Trinidadian Prime Minister at that time could compete with him. It was almost like no one else existed.
Both Ed and I are saying that Basdeo Panday was the best Prime Minister during 1995-2001 in the same way that a man who runs a race all by himself can call himself first. I think I’ve explained this enough. I hope when you see how obvious this was and how mistaken you were, you will feel just a little silly. Next time my brother, please read the post and comments in it’s entirety then do what I do, take a chill pill and then read it again. Don’t just go off and people they talking assness. Just as you say you’ve been reading for a long time and you should know my feelings about Basdeo Panday. But anyway that is not what I came here to discuss. If daiz all I wanted to talk I woulda handle that in the comments.
Secondly you say that I typify what is wrong with Trinidad. Me, brother? If I do typify what is wrong with the average Trinidadian, in what way? Because I’m complaining? It’s my right to complain. A few months ago you remarked that instead of complaining, I should give suggestion. I will tell you now what I told you back then. If the government can’t do the work, I “suggest” they leave. They’re the ones who told us they had all the answers to our problems. Now it’s apparent that this is not so. In my humble opinion, they should lef the wuk to people who could manage. Yes is Trinis what doing the crime, but they told us they can fix it, didn’t they? Or do we live in some kind of parallel universe where politicians don’t make election promises?
Are you new here? Because this talk about a creeping dictatorship didn’t begin with the constituency screenings. This has been an issue for over a year now (as far as I am aware). The screenings fiasco, just made it more apparent. By the way, if you think that this was all about bringing in “new blood” you are incredibly mistake. Why remove all these strong outspoken people like Diane Seukeran, Ken Valley and Camille Robinson-Regis and replace them with an entire slate of back-benchers? And let me ask you this, why no poll on the Ministers? You hear more complaints about the government ministers on any given day than about MPs, and yet no Bill Johnson poll on the ministers? This year we’re going to top 1,500 murders for this 5-year period, and no one bothers to ask us, “Hey, what allyuh think about dat Martin Joseph”? New blood? Something to just me doesn’t add up.
Did I say anything was wrong with free education? I am very thankful for free education, but what does that have to do with what you’re talking about?
By the way, I’m still waiting on you to tell me what is why I “typify what is wrong wid Trini”.
The Valley of Decision
Thursday, October 11th, 2007I‘m sorry for my absence, but I want you to know that I had a tabanca for you - as much as Ramesh had one for the UNC.
Well Ken Valley has dropped a bomb over the Prime Minister and it seems that all is not well in the State of Denmark. Prior to reading the story in the Guardian this morning, I watched Shelly Dass’ interview with the embattled MP last night.
I have to say that even though I’m a fan of Shelly’s anchoring, I’m not a huge fan of her interviewing style. Her excessive use of finger quotes is only partly to blame. Sometimes I wish she’d learn how to blend into the background more rather than be in the spotlight.
That having been said, Valley has stated that he was not angry, hurt or disappointed. But he did manage to look very much like the cat that swallowed the canary. Most of the time it was difficult listening to him because he seemed so excited and breathless that sometimes he became unintelligible.
PresidencyI have no difficulty with an executive president if it’s a popular executive president - meaning that the person must stand for election under the country as a whole not simply one coming through winning one seat and being elected by the parliament as an executive president - I have difficulty with that.
Ken Valley’s aim in coming out now was to save the country from the creeping dictatorship that he sees coming down the road. Now Mr. Valley has not abandoned his party - quite the contrary. He says that he loves his party, but he loves his country more. He states though, that this executive presidency we end up with comes without the checks and balances that you would normally have in the presidency. A little scary isn’t it?
Of course there are many asking why didn’t he come out and say this before, but he did say that he tried and no one paid attention and so this is his last resort.
I thought I saw something that is going wrong, I first of all tested it within the party, it’s out in the public domain. I have done what I can, tonight I bring closure on this issue.
It had me wondering how he expects to change the “PNM till ah dead” mentality after nurturing it for so long. Surely he doesn’t expect that at the insistence of a rejected MP, all die hards will do a 180 degree turn. But if you listen carefully, it seems as if he’s trying to appeal to the UNC and COP supporters along with the undecideds.
All forces of good must come together, especially those marginals. The number of persons who will stay home and not vote those are the people who will make a difference. The PNM people will vote PNM, the UNC people will vote UNC, the COP people will vote COP. The people who will make a difference are those people who will stay home and not vote. And they have to come out in this election and make a difference. - Ken Valley
I have not read the draft constitution and therefore I’m not familiar with what Super Manning’s new powers will be. But after months of hearing the Opposition talking about a creeping dictatorship, it seems much truer now and I dare say we should all be worried.
Political Race Heating Up
Thursday, October 11th, 2007This post was previously posted as a guest post on the Izatrini blog on Monday.
It was definitely a politically-charged weekend here in T&T with all three political parties (and the MND) holding their major rallies. When people say that this is going to be the mother of all elections you had better believe it.
The People’s National Movement has been the only party so far to announce a full slate of candidates while the UNC alliance has named 21 and the Congress of the People has named 38. Word from the COP is that they will unveil their last three candidates shortly - a “secret weapon” to unseat Patrick Manning at a later date and its two Tobgaonian candidates at a rally in Tobago.
Looking at that sea of orange yesterday at the Mid Center Mall, it’s plain to see that the UNC still has a tremendous amount of support. It was the largest group of people I have seen at a political gathering for this election season. It is going to be something very difficult for either the PNM or the COP to ignore. In fact, I’m sure that many a confidence took a hit yesterday upon seeing the crowd at the Mid Center Mall. How that crowd, or any crowd for that matter, translates into
votes will be the meat of the matter.
Front Page of the Sunday Guardian
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| Cover of the Sunday Guardian |
My sister pointed this out to me. At first glance, the photos on the front page of the Guardian make Dookeran look like an angel and Manning the opposite. It helps that Dookeran is dressed in white and has two angel-wing-looking things behind him. It also helps that Patos is dressed in red. Obviously the effect was not intentional, but it still makes it all funny.
Famous Abusive Relationships in history
- Ike & Tina Turner
- Mike Tyson & Mike Tyson
- The People’s National Movement & Lavantille
- Kamla Persad Bissessar & The United National Congress
Poor Kamla. She waited and waited. Shrugged it off when people refer to
her appointment as AG as a “10 days”. She was loyal and brownnosing and all she gets is to be head of a fictional “women’s army” - because she’s a woman.
I listened to most of her speech on Sunday - the one where she was carded to speak for 10 minutes and spoke for 35 - and I have to say I was a little surprised at how she spoke out about the treatment meted out to her.
After being introduced to the sounds of, “No Woman, No Cry”, she ranted and raved and yet got no support from the other platform members, and still she waits. You know, denial isn’t a river in Africa, at some point she is going to have to admit she is “Waiting in Vain” for Panday’s love. Maybe now she will take the hint and retire to the kitchen where she could bake the old boys some pie.
