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Just A Little Patois History

 

Telecom News about TSTT

Trinidad and Tobago

Wednesday, 8 December 2010

TSTT launches WiMAX network

Huawei and Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT) have announced the launch of what they claim to be the Caribbean's largest commercial WiMAX network. The first phase of the deployment covers only selected parts of the islands, although this will be extended during 2011 to connect all of the islands making up the Trinidad &.Tobago archipeligo. George Hill, Chief Technology Officer of TSTT, said, ‘With this milestone, TSTT has taken a great leap forward towards our ultimate aim: to make high-quality, wireless broadband accessible to as many people as possible. We are very proud of this achievement.’

According to Huawei's press release, its WiMAX solution is used by over 79 commercial WiMAX networks across Europe, North America, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Middle East, and Africa. Huawei says it is currently working on WiMAX projects with Clearwire in the United States, BSNL in India, Globe in the Philippines and MTN in the Middle East and Africa.

Fixing CL Financial

Cl Financial is the biggest privately held conglomerate in the West Indies. It may very well be the biggest conglomerate, public or private period. This once proud giant has fallen unto hard times, and the legacy of Cyril Duprey, a true Caribbean business icon is under threat of being irreparably damaged. Not to mention the lives of thousands of policy holders across the West Indies; the fallout of which could have a negative impact on the economy of several island states for years to come. The fact that CL Financial is bankrupt is no longer in any doubt. The only question left to answer clearly is, whether the government intervention will lead to a Government controlled restructure, or will they be forced into a court ordered restructure or liquidation; by their inability to seize the opportunity to use this crisis as a means to create the necessary legislation that will help transform the economy, and lead to the diversity of ownership of public business entities, which will grow the portfolio of the Trinidad and Tobago stock exchange. Their indecision as to how to proceed is only compounding the effects of the accumulating losses.

To be fair the government is operating under several legal constraints, for example there is the formal contract signed with Lawrence Dyprey that initiated governments’ involvement, as well as the convoluted trail of intercompany loans and ownership deals. There is the bankruptcy and insolvency act of 2007 which is still awaiting proclamation, and the existing act which is modeled after the English company’s act of 1929. That’s right 1929. What really is incomprehensible is why the 2007 act has not been modified to address the CL Financial debacle, and then proclaimed over the last eight months? The news of CL financial fall was reported in the daily news papers sometime in April of this year. The new government has been sitting in parliament since June, and no one saw this as an urgent issue to be addressed. The budget which was passed made provisions to compensate policy holders, but the new bankruptcy law which could have been amended specifically to cover the CL Financial restructuring was left untouched, and make no mistake restructuring  is the unintended route the government has taken.

 Believe it or not CL Financial can be saved, at least in part if it is restructured along the lines of General Motors. This will neither be cheap or painless for anyone. First the government must take control of the company in a way that voids certain elements of the Lawrence Duprey contract. They can use retroactive dating in the modification of the 2007 bankruptcy act to accomplish this. Whether it is done on the basis of some variation of the principal of eminent domain, or economic security as national security matters not. These options have been suggested to me, but I am sure that there are some really brilliant legal minds in Trinidad and Tobago that can come up with the correct legal jargon that will pass the muster as law. They then must complete a negotiated settlement with outstanding creditors forcing them to accept a percentage of the outstanding debt owed as full payment, using a maximum target of say fifty cents on the dollar or something along those lines. All asset sales made within a specific time before the first government intervention must legally be declared null and void. The non performing companies within the conglomerate must be liquidated. This would get rid of the Clico brand name but it’s already dead anyway, and its’ underwriting portfolios can then be sold.

What would be left behind are the prize companies which can then form a new smaller conglomerate, one hundred percent of which would be owned by the government to be sold in a public offering on the Trinidad and Tobago stock exchange. The government could even enhance the overall value of the initial public offering by including one or two of its’ own holdings as part of the sale. First Citizens bank, and or, the unit trust come to mine. Some of the outstanding unpaid debt held by creditors could be converted into shares of the new publicly owned and traded corporate entity. The monies raised from the actual sale of stocks can be used to further pay down the outstanding debt, and lastly the government could issue bonds to be used as final part payment to creditors to cover the remaining balance, as well as for sale to the general public so that the burden to wind down the company is spread over ten, fifteen, or even twenty years.                               

Just Some Thoughts About Marriage

Lately I have been thinking about the whole act of marriage. What is it exactly, that motivates a man to commit such a romantic act of unselfish love? For that is what a proposal of marriage truly is. Why else would any man willing choose to abandon the comfort of his own home, and venture out to create for the benefit of others some as yet unborn; that which is already at his feet. What does it mean to a man when at last he finally finds the courage to ask a woman for her hand? Some would be quick to say he does it for love, but is this all? What other noble cause is there that so compels his love towards self sacrifice?

 Men by their very nature are providers and are thus driven to do just that, but what exactly does that mean in today’s world? For if the very nature of providing for one’s family has changed; does that not also mean the very essence of what makes a man a man has changed as well, and if indeed it has, how has it affected the nature of marriage, and the role of the man in it. If it is that a man is driven to find a kindred female sprit with whom to share his life, and to whom for the promise of love’s gentle comfort he thus bequeaths all the fruits of his life’s labor; then what have we as a society lost, because we can no longer fathom or bring ourselves to believe the true depths of a man’s commitment to, and for, the woman he chooses to be his bride? What have we all lost because society has found it easier to measure all men against the extreme behavior of the exceptions, rather than the unsung, and heroic sacrifices of the much more abundantly faithful, loving husbands, and fathers? This subtle bias that implies all men are to be deemed tainted with the stigma of male hubris and can only become less so by their constant effort of proving they are in fact enlightened, saps the very lifeblood of romance out of marriage.

While the following words no longer hold sway in our modern times; there is a certain romantic beauty to them, for it begins by establishing that a husband is first, and above all else a man of self sacrificing, and noble character. To wit his wife is beholden, to honor and respect his commitment to her well being.      

"Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labor both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst though liest warm at home, secure and safe,
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience-
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is forward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey."

 

The Time For change Is Now

So I have been procrastinating, or was just plain too lazy to write for the last couple of months. I‘m going to claim writer’s block, but the real cause is life happens while you are trying to live, and with Patrick de man Manning gone I sort of lost interest in the political side of live. Then there was the rest of the summer vacation. Not forgetting the back to work, and school rush. So here we are in December already and four months have happened all too quickly. At this rate I won’t be ready for Christmas until sometime in February of next year.

 Winter is about to settle over New England once again so we up here will be doing our part to help the  economic situation back home by burning heating oil, and gas like it going out of style to heat our homes for the next three months. Fall has left the trees all but bare of leaves, night falls at five in the afternoon, and wild geese are getting ready to fly south. Thanksgiving has come and gone and the first inkling of snow is in the air. Change is happening all around us.

  Back at home Kamla has been busy flying here and flying there, Jack seems incapable or unable to stay away from the headlines, meanwhile nothing has really changed. Putting out the fires left burning by the last government is all well and good but we need to address the real cause of all those fires; if we are to ensure that we do not spend our time running everywhere but going nowhere. Give them time is what I am hearing from most everyone, but how much time is enough time when everything is broken and must be fixed, and who is to say at what point in time does enough time become too much time.  Rowley is yet to prove he is anything other than Patrick lite, me thinks he doth protest too much, and Patrick de man Manning has completely lost his freaking mind.

Here is one example of the sorry state of politics in T and T. School children now have laptops but the schools lack the operating IT platforms to turn these computers into effective learning tools. On an investment that is valued in the tens of millions of dollars are you kidding me? I have looked everywhere to see if I could find out whether the schools are using Google Docs for Schools, or First Class as their IT platform software, but have been unsuccessful in my endeavors thus far.  Have the ministry of education installed WI fi towers on school campuses to enable wireless access to these platforms. This by the way would allow the IT department at the school or ministry to block unwanted websites.  Has the ministry created school websites that have access to and employ the IT platform software? Have teachers been given computers? Have teachers and students been given dedicated school email addresses?  Have the teacher and student computers been preloaded with Microsoft works?  Do these school websites have parent portals which would allow parents to monitor class assignments, teacher comments, their child’s grades, and daily attendance record among other things? Do these school websites have access to virtual bookstores or dedicated online resources? Do they have Student portals where home work assignments, class lessons, reference material and class notes can be posted? What arrangements have been made to ensure that all students can access the school website from their homes? Your guess is as good as mine.

At present on any given afternoon from any computer and from any place in the world with internet access my son can sign onto his school’s website. Lookup what was studied in any of his courses on that day, or he can search the class achieves if need be. Find his specific homework assignment, open a new word document and complete it, and then he can email it directly to his teacher. I can from any place in the world sign onto his school’s website go to the virtual bookstore and order his schoolbooks, check his grades, check to see if he is really in school, and email any of his teachers using their dedicated school email  with my concerns.         

 The point I want to make is this, the PNM government engaged in shortsighted, uncoordinated, partial planning even in the smallest of projects and look what it has wrought upon all of us. Is the people’s Partnership already guilty of making the same mistake? Is this whole and unprecedented change of government a case of same khaki pants different back pocket?

 

A Question of Obstruction of Justice

The legal doctrine that empowers the police to arrest without a warrant is encoded in the criminal act of Trinidad and Tobago by statute. The act states; where a police officer, with reasonable cause suspects that an arrestable offence has been committed, he may arrest without warrant anyone whom he, with reasonable cause suspects to be guilty of the offence. This is a singular and most important piece of legislation, for it endows our police force not only with the authority, but also the physical ability to maintain law and order with the urgent dispatch that is oftentimes necessary when it becomes functionally impossible to first seek the issuance of a warrant to execute an arrest. This law is one of the fundamental legal pillars of any democratic society for without it the day to day operational processes of our police service would simply cease to exist, and our society would be plunged into chaos.

 Incredible as it may seem this is also the legal statute to which our commissioner of police is now claiming complete and total ignorance. He would have us believe that not once in more than over forty years of police service has he ever been made privy to the existence of such a statute, neither has he ever arrested anyone without a warrant, based solely on reasonable cause. He also is not aware of any other police officer who has ever done this and thus cannot sanction his officers to now do so at the Guanapo church site. He would also have us believe even though he holds a criminal law degree, even with this; he still remains blissfully oblivious of the existence of this statute. As hard as I try I cannot be kind about this, I simply can’t. Are you fucking kidding me?

 The truth is anyone and everyone who attempted to sprit away material from the Guanapo church site could have, and should have been arrested for the summary offence of illegal possession of such building material unless, and until they could provide proof that they were acting as agents for, and with the full consent, and knowledge of the owner. I am also hard pressed to believe that not one member of the congregation from the lighthouse of our lord Jesus Christ not even Patrick Manning knowing full well that someone other than their pastor was constructing a church on lands granted to them by the government for this very purpose has not stepped forward to provide the commissioner with the information he needs to identify who owns the building that is being constructed, neither have they gone to court to legally settle this issue. Surely one has to believe that a congregation with such religious passion as to solicit the government for lands upon which to build a church would not now stand idly by, and watch as others turn their more than five year long dream into ashes and dust, by making off with the very building materials they have labored for so long and so hard to obtain for the construction of just such a church.    

 

 There is a much bigger picture here of course and that is the ongoing criminal investigation into the indictable offence of misappropriation of public funds. It appears to be in both the lighthouse of our lord Jesus Christ followers’ interest, and the commissioner’s personal interest as well to prevent the identity of the owner of the building under construction at Guanapo from being revealed to the general public.

 

Misappropriation is the intentional illegal use of the property or funds of another person for one’s own use or other unauthorized purpose particularly by a public official. It is an indictable offence and punishable by a prison sentence. To review the facts so far; it has been alleged and there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest, that funds earmarked to erect a building at the prime minister’s residence were redirected without proper authority, and said building is now being constructed at Guanapo. These findings have launched two investigations, one by the integrity commission, and the other a criminal investigation by the police.

 

 It is important here I think to make a clear distinction. It is quite legal for the government through one of its ministries or offices to fund the construction of a religious building, once the funds were legally appropriated within the parliamentary system to do so. It is another thing entirely for individual employees within a government ministry or office, up to and even including the person of prime minister to act in their narrow self interest only and therefore attempt to usurp the democratic authority of the parliamentary system, by illegally diverting the funds in the public purse from its designated expenditure to meet or fulfill their private needs, or to dispose of these funds on projects they personally deem to be more worthy.

 

 At the very least the commissioner of police should have instructed the unit in charge of the investigation to seek a court order declaring the Guanapo church site a crime scene wherein there is the potential for the recovery of evidence, and as such must be protected from interference of any kind, access to the site should not be granted to anyone other than the investigators. This would have insured a police presence at the site with the authority to stop the indiscriminate removal of building material.  Instead what we have seen is the commissioner of police doing his best to obstruct justice by first not protecting a crime scene, and then allowing the removal of potential evidence from that scene even after being repeatedly asked by no less a person than the attorney general to secure the site. When in utter frustration the attorney general raises his voice in open anger at the unresponsive and clearly incompetent commissioner, people actually came running to his defense. Really??? What the hell can they be thinking? I can only wonder as to what exactly would make these people so delusional that they would support the commissioner of police while he is actively engaged in the blatant obstruction of justice in an ongoing criminal investigation. 

 

To see just how much the commissioner has obstructed the advancement of the criminal investigation one just has to read his only public statement on the matter. He claimed that the Guanapo site had been abandoned, but this clearly is not true. What we do know is the contractor has quit the site for nonpayment, but the contractor is not the owner. A contractor quitting a site cannot legally constitute abandonment of the property by the owner, and it most certainly does not rescind the authority of the police in their duty to protect the owner’s rights against vandalism, or other such crimes against personal property. If this were the case then the government office building at Chancery lane San Fernando which has been without a contractor for some time can be indiscriminately looted without the fear of police intervention, but no one really believes they can do  that, do they.

 

 So this begs the obvious question how does he know that the owner has really abandoned the site, when in the same statement he declares that the police does not know who owns the property. The far more disturbing and alarming thing is at every turn he has failed to follow up, or act upon information that would lead to the discovery of the name of the owner. He has failed to obtain a court subpoena for the contractor to turn over the building contract.  This document would not only contain the name of the owner but also the owner’s address along with the names of all other interested parties, even quite possibly the name of the company responsible for the project financing.

 

One would have thought that any financial corporation faced with the imminent lose of a thirty million dollar building loan fully convertible into a thirty year mortgage worth over ninety million dollars would be screaming to have the site secured, and the missing owner found, drawn, and quartered. It is unthinkable in this day and age to actually believe that anyone would self finance a thirty million dollar building project. Then again maybe I am the naive one, and there are actually pastors in Trinidad and Tobago who are so wealthy and filled with such religious fervor and morality they can just simply walk away from thirty million dollars. The very fact that not a single financial institution has come forward so far in an attempt to mitigate their mounting losses by claiming a contractual right to the property for nonpayment of the outstanding construction debt incurred by the owner just smacks of the crime of Misappropriation. 

   

 As far as anyone knows the commissioner has failed to instruct his officers to attempt to find the name of the owner by searching the records of the Piarco Municipal Corporation as they had to issue the building permit for the church. He has failed to instruct his officers to inquire at the ministry of legal affairs where the church had to registered as a not for profit organization. He has failed to instruct his officers to contact the staff at the church’s current office as they would know who was constructing a building on their land.

 

The one question I want to ask is why, why would James Philbert our acting commissioner of police who has sworn an oath to bring all criminals to swift and speedy  justice consciously and methodically impede and frustrate the quick resolution of this investigation? 

Just a Thought about the Election

In order for a democracy, any democracy to function in the best interest of all its’ citizens the basic facts surrounding  the fundamental issues that shape the hopes, aspirations, and vision of the people must first be communicated within the body politic. There must be real public debate of these issues. Citizens may disagree as to which policies must prevail and take priority for the implementation of the resolution of these issues to move the country forward, but they neither posses the right  to remain uninformed, nor  can they choose to be ignorant of  what is happening in their own country. Knowledge of the political issues in a democratic society eventually crystallizes into public sentiment, and thus gives rise to the unified voice that is representative of the will of the people. In essence knowledge of political issues is the very currency of citizenship, and a governmental parliamentary process that is both transparent and accountable is the market place where this currency is traded.

 Patrick Manning as holder of the office of Prime minister and head of the People’s National Movement articulated a particular vision for Trinidad and Tobago, Vision 2020 was communicated to the body politic, but there was never any relevant and spirited public debate that resulted in a public consensus, therefore the Manning government never had nor does it now have an overwhelming popular mandate to implement vision 2020. As a citizen who happens to be a progressive liberal there are large swathes of this document with which I personally disagree. There are also several social and economic issues which I think it should immediately address; such as privatization of state owned corporations, the separation of church and state, a woman’s right to abortion and homosexual and transgender rights, clearly it does not now do so. Even so I gave it my guarded support and waited for its’ implementation thinking there would be much more consultation on line items to help shore up support for something that did not have the approval of the majority of the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago. My hope was that this document was the beginning of a work in progress that would somehow be expanded to include the hopes, dreams, and aspiration of the vast majority of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. Needless to say I have been extremely disappointed by the display of arrogance by the Manning administration towards any criticism of vision 2020 which has reviled a very autocratic, uncompromising style of management quite out of step with the political ideals expressed in our constitution. He has taken every criticism of the implementation of line items of vision 2020 and transformed them into a referendum of his own performance.   So I would now like to take the opportunity to add to Mr. Manning’s distress by highlighting some of the areas where in my opinion this document has fallen short or has been found wanting for substance.

Land and other property reform which for the first time would allow every citizen the equal right and opportunity to own or hold  land, home, business, and part of our natural resources, is by far the single most important issue that directly affects the prosperity of everyone who lives in Trinidad and Tobago. Yet after seven years it still has not been addressed by the Manning government. One would think since vision 2020 is an outline to get us to developed country status this would be a leading issue for which legistration would be enacted. Instead they have placed the cart before the horse by attempting to pass property tax reform first. They have failed to divest themselves of state owned properties, and commercial and industrial investments via the Trinidad and Tobago stock Market which would have the effect of transferring billions of dollars of wealth from the state to their rightful owners, the citizens of this country. They have also failed to rewrite the tax code for the oil and gas industry, and the oil and gas subsidy remains biased in favor of corporations and the wealthy. Land and other property reform who am I kidding not in my lifetime.

 I guess I could explain that every home that is built on land for which the homeowner does not have a valid deed or leasehold contract is for all intent and purpose a zero sum asset that not only arrests prosperity but wastes it. Or that a gas subsidy that is paid at the pump rather than an oil and gas royalty that is paid directly to families perpetuates citizen inequality and so is both unfair and unjust, but why bother.

Crime what else is there to say? It appears that the Manning government has taken the same hands off, laissez faire approach to this as they have taken with so much of everything else. We needed to at least double the size of the police force seven years ago, to date this has not yet been undertaken far less accomplished, and as a matter of fact the head of our national police force is still acting in a temporary capacity after several years. The construction of modern police stations still needs to be seriously addressed. Even after the expenditure of several hundred millions of dollars that may well run into the billions of dollars by now for an Island wide radar system, helicopters, and fast gun boats, the importation of Canada’s and England’s finest, as well as expensive consultants from the USA  crime continues to rise unabated.

Our criminal justice system is now a joke. Anyone who commits murder in this country has a ninety eight percent chance of not being caught by the police. That needs repeating, yes anyone who commits a murder in Trinidad and Tobago has a ninety eight percent chance of not being caught by the police, and the two percent that do get apprehended can rest assured that the conviction rate is less than fifty percent. Look at it this way a woman taking birth control pills in Trinidad and Tobago who meticulously and scrupulously follows all her doctors’ instructions and recommendations runs a greater risk of becoming pregnant than a murderer has of being convicted for killing someone. To say that things have gone horribly wrong would be an understatement, and yet the minister still has a job he goes to every morning while citizens are dying by the hundreds each year, are you kidding me.

The paradox of the existence of both Municipal Corporations, cepep and the urp. Municipal Corporations exist to manage the capital assets of a community or county such as public buildings, playgrounds, and parks. They also manage and maintain the infrastructure such as roads, bridges, sewage, drainage, and garbage removal. These corporations are generally funded by property taxes.

If for example the Diego Martin Municipal Corporation is fully staffed and so has all the management,  manpower, equipment, machinery, and the building and road supplies it needs to properly maintain the county’s infrastructure why are there cepep and urp gangs in Diego martin county? What are they doing that cannot be done by the full time employees of the Municipal Corporation? What unique set of expertise do they posses that cannot be passed on to the workers at the Municipal Corporation?  Why are they getting paid? Is it that the Municipal Corporation is not fully staffed or perhaps it’s’ managers and administrators are incompetent in some way as to make them unfit to fulfill their responsibility to the citizens of Diego Martin county? If so rather than create a whole new shadow bureaucracy of part time workers, managers, and administrators at an annual cost of billions of dollars wouldn’t it make more sense to simply have the Corporation hire the full time workers it needed and fire and replace the incompetent ones or maybe train the employees to the skill level that is required.

Why would the Manning administration saddle the citizens of Diego Martin or any other county for that matter with a shadow bureaucracy to their existing Municipal Corporation? What would make this a necessary course of action when it has been public knowledge for sometime that these same bureaucracies over the last seven years have not contributed in any significant way towards eliminating the poor road conditions, or the flooding problems experienced by the people of Diego Martin or any other county? Rather they have proven themselves to be violently criminal in nature and responsible in part for increasing the murder rate in these very communities. Is this also part of vision 2020?   

This election has provided the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago with an opportunity that has long eluded them. Not since the first general election between the PNM and the DLP have I been so hopeful. Now as then there is a true coalition of progressives, liberals, and labor, united in its’ purpose which is to stop the slide into the conservative abyss and reset the balance between the public interest and capitalism. I know there are some who would say they don’t have a plan beyond getting rid of the PNM, but that is exactly why this is an opportunity so full of promise. History informs us when governments as well as the citizens expectations of the role of government are in transition, this is precisely when the knowledge of political issues are most widely disseminated throughout the body politic .This is precisely when the most important conversations that encompasses the hopes and aspirations of the people are at their most engaging. This is precisely when politicians are most unconstrained in allowing citizens to direct the course of such debates. This is precisely when transparency and accountability are made resolute. This is when real nation building is forged.                                               

      

News from Ghana

Email   Print Have Your Say ( 0 )         The Deputy Managing Director of the Republic Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, Mr. Gregory Thompson, has expressed optimism about identifying investment opportunities in the country. "Ghana's economy has a lot of similarities with Trinidad and Tobago, and having had the privilege of operating in our oil economy successfully, we believe there are several areas where we can bring lessons we have learned to bear on the Ghanaian economy," he said. Mr. Thompson made these remarks when the delegation paid a visit to the Minister of Energy Dr. Oteng-Agyei. The high powered delegation was led by the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Mr. Hilton John Mitchell. It also included Gregory Thompson and Mr. Robert Le-Hunte, Managing Director of Barbados National Bank. The delegation expects to interact with major players within the financial sector, including the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, as well as regulators, managing directors of banks, and the business community. The Republic Bank of Trinidad and Tobago is one of the largest and most successful indigenous banks in the English-speaking Caribbean, with a current asset base of approximately US$7 billion and employs over 4,500 people in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Guyana and Barbados. "Given that the total asset base of the Ghanaian banking sector is about US$10 billion, we have a strong enough base to participate meaningfully in Ghana's economy," said Robert Le-Hunte. The Republic Bank has proven expertise in financing Trinidad and Tobago's efficient production, processing and monetization of gas, with the country being the largest producer of methanol and ammonia in the world. The Bank also has a lot of interest in agriculture. Source: B&