A speedy recovery to Mr Clarke, but ...

This newspaper is sorry to hear of the illness of Roger Clarke, the agriculture minister, and the fact that he is to undergo surgery, which will keep him out of office for as long as nine months.

We wish Mr Clarke the utmost success in treatment. We will, in the meantime, miss his joviality and innate human decency.

We, however, do not look forward to his return to the agriculture ministry. Nor do we welcome Derrick Kellier's proposed tenancy in the post. Frankly, as has been the case at the labour ministry, Mr Kellier has nothing to add at agriculture. At least, Roger Clarke was of great humour and good in repartee.

We feel that Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller should use Mr Clarke's enforced absence to put the agriculture ministry in the charge of a new type of individual - modern, technocratic and visionary, someone who transcends 19th-century notions of agriculture and sees its relationship with a modern economy.

Again, we wish Mr Clarke a speedy recovery and, thereafter, lasting health.

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