This my presentation to male students and leaders at North Hall in St Augustine on Thursday, 28 November 2019. The nominal topic was ‘How to curtail corruption‘ but in actuality I would call it ‘State-owned hotels in T&T – a research review‘.
Programme Date: 28 November 2019
Programme Length: 00:51:09
AfraRaymond.net 
Afra’s State-owned hotels in T&T – a research review endorses Shadow’s 1981 calypso called “Conscience,” in which Shadow pleads to someone to remove his conscience. Had Shadow lived, he would have seen his plea substantially, sanctioned still, de facto, by our leaders. Afra’s false paradox- the belief in miracles and the disbelief in the possibility of change- ironically validates that sanction in that the myriad miracles of the state’s unconscionable pilfering of trillions of taxes while it believes that the “all ah we tief” principle is unchangeable, yet Afra’s intervention halted the Sandals project, exposes the Clico fiscal debacle and stymies the extension of Invaders’ Bay to the Chin / Scott corporation.
Afra cited Eric Williams’ definition of citizens’ democratic responsibilities and linked them to the privileges we earn if we are taught about the true meaning of republicanism. Sadly we are routinely taught by rote only about the opposition’s irresponsibility, disregarding each administration’s cyclic complicity as we learn now of yet another local private company, Unipet, that owes Paria Fuel Trading Company – a state enterprise- $172 million, according to the online Guardian report of 6th Dec 2019. So our citizens are taught what power really does. Power creates orthodoxy and by its inherent intellectual illogic, that orthodoxy though constitutionally sound, (de jure) is in fact (Afra’s unconscious filler) unconstitutional in practice.
My belief, like Shadow’s, is that if we create a Calypso Review University and research Black Stalin, Roaring Lion, Denyse Plummer, Shadow, Crazy, Rudder, Singing Sandra, Sparrow, Voice, Designer, Machel, Kitchener and all others with the proper pedantic principles that Afra detailed, then we shall begin to understand the ambivalent orthodoxy of democracy. Sparrow sang, “If meh head was bright, ah woodda be ah damn fool, whoopsemama.”