There’s an ongoing battle for ownership of the mega-million dollar newspaper, Newsday. The company launched by Daniel Chookolingo in 1993, is getting no media publicity because two years after its launch, the daily immediately became the fastest selling newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago outstripping the then 30-year old Trinidad Express and the mighty Guardian which was then over 75 years old. Both newspaper and their vast billion dollar media outfits have remained silent since the case was filed in the High Court in 2014.While Newsday’s up-to-date value remains shrouded, there was a valuation done a decade ago which put its worth at over $200 million dollars. Sources close to Mr Chookolingo says this is a bogus value which was given by the Steve Castagne controlled board to buy out minority shareholders to gain full control of his company.
Memorable Quotes …
PM defends his ‘rich get richer’ comment
December 1, 2020
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has doubled down and defended his, “we have to allow the rich to get richer” comment, saying people in this country can sometimes be too “thin-skinned”.
“The last time you were here with me on August 12th, I asked you a question; I honestly cannot remember what the exact question was, but your response to me was ‘we have to allow the rich to get richer to provide jobs for the poor’ and people took offense to that and asked me to ask you to clarify what exactly you meant,” Natalee Legore said to Rowley during an interview on the Morning Brew today.
“I thought that was simple English,” Rowley said.
‘If people have to be employed, somebody has to employ them; they don’t employ themselves and pay themselves. We asked the private sector and even the government—but put the government aside—the private sector to invest and spend money,” he said.
“A lot of the money in the bank belongs to private people. Many of them are entrepreneurs, they will invest that money if they feel comfortable that if they invested, they will make some more,” the PM elaborated.
“Nobody will go and invest their money to get less or to get nothing. They do things, open a business, they do things to get some more money and if you think you’re rich, you have some money and you invest it doing something to get more, invariably you need some other people to help you. Those are the employees. So, if there are rich people, meaning people who have money, and they want to put that money out there to do something with it, that automatically creates opportunities for other people,” he said.
Dr Rowley had faced some social media backlash for his comments in August 2021.
“It was not an ideological statement in defense of the rich or saying that some should be rich, and some should be poor. But you know we are so thin-skinned in this place,” Rowley said. End of Quote.
The ideology referred to is where the rich and super rich get the bulk of State resources has been debunked since the Ronald Regan (US) and Margret Thatcher (UK) experiments of the 1980s. Many T&T nationals now believe that Dr Rowley’s position as PM has been compromised by his friendship (unapologetic) with certain elites who heavily financed his first run for PM in 2015 and point to his rich get richer ‘ideology’ as proof of this. Billions now flow to these same elites in the form of contracts from government and especially various state companies which are not reflected in the 55+ billion dollar annual budgets. Many of the ministries have little or no oversight including the National Security and Legal Affairs where for example multi-million dollar attorneys are hired with no tendering process. It is well known that state companies are responsible for handling billions of dollars annually in contracts that are quite separate to the $55+ billion national budget. Some of them include several companies in the energy sector including Heritage / Petrotrin, NGC, NIB, WASA, CAL, TSTT, UDeCOTT, state media companies, various ports entities. They are just the tip of the iceberg. These ‘state companies’ are touted as ‘independent’ but their boards are appointed by the government to dish out contracts to the same oligarchs who are friendly with the ministers and who finance ALL the political parties and campaigns …as is done in most countries. That is probably why when a major party lose, they choose to remain virtually silent for most of the next 5 years.
Quotes from Karen Nunez-Teshira made on 28th April 2022:
The root of corruption in T&T is trans-shipment of Cocaine … the same people who have the politicians jumping to their call.
She said that “Patrick Manning wanted to deal with the drug trade …I can’t call the names he called (of those in the drug trade) but if I tell you the names he called, you’ll be shocked. If I tell you the names he called who are the big business in this country you might be shocked. This is not hearsay, Mr Manning told me and when I see some of these names in top positions in this country, I am sure of my views of this (Rowley) government.
It is now known by many T&T nationals that these big businesses are the same people who financed the various Dr Rowley campaigns to which he is beholden for life.
August 30, 2022: President Paula-Mae Weeks asks
“How The France Did We Get Here”
On the eve of T&T’s 60th anniversary as an independence country, the President of T&T asks rhetorically in a message ‘How The France Did We Get Here’.
Stating there was restlessness in the immediate landscape and T&T appears to be that of a wilderness with increasingly brazen animosity; ugly, divisive politics, rampant unemployment, distressing reports of child abuse and troubling poverty.
She said that while T&T always had its problems citing some lawbreaking, corruption, societal dysfunction and ethnic divisions but said not to the extremes that they now exist and then laments ‘how the France did we get here?’ The President then asks citizens to take responsibility for their affairs. …and citizens went to their jobs with purpose, with pride, with integrity, with discipline, without cynicism, without hidden agendas, without skullduggery, without partisanship.
TTjusticefoundation must now ask the President of T&T to look into
the mirror and ask herself these very same questions as the people she consorts with (by design or duty) are the biggest culprits in what she correctly described on 30th August speech to the nation. The biggest culprits are the people she knocks cocktail glasses with, many of the very Judges she served with as a Court of Appeal Justice, the politicians most of whom voted her in as President of the Republic because they could count on her to go with the flow or her complicity. The fact that she sees herself as an ineffective, powerless and weak leader that is afraid to step outside her little box …is evident from her remarks.
The fact that she knew the rules of the of how a democratic and effective country operates from the law she knew so well which involves the separation of powers especially when she herself admits the unitary State of T&T is on the verge of collapse. The fact that she must know that she has the Constitutional authority to ask the Government of the day during regular meetings on the progress of various aspects of the running of the country as provided for by the Constitution. The fact that she could initiate investigations is of deep concern as she herself has now admitted after-the-fact ‘how the France did we get here?’
