If the People’s National Party (PNP) is serious in its willingness to close regulatory loopholes of money in politics – as its general secretary, Dayton Campbell, suggests it is – it can start by complying with the spirit of a simple element of the...
A woman once related a story to me of how, during the later stage of her pregnancy, she boarded a bus from Half Way Tree to Portmore and ended up standing the entire journey notwithstanding many men being seated on the bus. She, like many other...
Silver and gold will vanish away but … actually, the unfinished last part is not true, because unfortunately, many of us experience some degree of dementia later in life. However, during our active lives, a solid education in our fields is...
Prime Minister Andrew Holness is worried that the widening skills gap in the construction industry will undermine a recovering Jamaican economy, even as he anticipates a construction boom along the north coast. The prime minister’s concerns, and...
To my friend, Dr Johny Coomansingh, whose call I missed and made the excuse, “My phone responds only some of the time. It is like a worker in Trinidad.” George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, satirist and Nobel Prize winner, quipped, “...
CARICOM states led the way in the Organization of American States (OAS) on April 21 in a historic vote to suspend the status of the Russian Federation as a permanent observer to the OAS. Eleven other CARICOM countries supported Antigua and Barbuda...
During the current fiscal year, the Government will spend J$7.1 billion on its school feeding programme, providing breakfasts and lunches to 130,000 students. We wish more children could be accommodated in the programme. For as the education...
A few weeks ago, around the time of the tabling of the 2022-2023 Budget, there was a bit of discussion about the cost of food for inmates in the island’s prisons. The discussion which caused some uneasiness was prodded by a news report in the...
I was intrigued by the results of an opinion poll conducted in February this year by the Mona Centre for Leadership and Governance at The University of the West Indies. The poll found that only a little over one-third (36 per cent) of Jamaica’s...
RUSSIA’S VLADIMIR Putin, as Joe Biden claims, may indeed be a war criminal who is permitting genocide in Ukraine, which his country invaded. “...We have to gather all the evidence and have a war crimes trial,” Mr Biden said. Despite the support Mr...
I SAW a most heartbreaking sight this weekend. And no, I’m not talking about the Denver Nuggets’ 20-point blow-out loss to Golden State. I’m referring to a social media video of an accident somewhere in the country involving a motor vehicle...
THE LAST 10 years have seen notable degrees of expansionism in the Jamaican society. Without going into any great amount of details, we have had the continuing expansion of the police force, the rapid expansion of the military, and violent...
In recent weeks, Dr Christopher Tufton and his advisers at the health ministry have gone strangely quiet. Neither the minister nor Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie, the chief medical officer (CMO), is in the media providing data and analyses of the...
Migrants deserve fair and equal treatment, whether they are Black, White or Coloured, but that is not what British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cooked up. He has devised what his critics have called “a callous, inhumane plan” to deport Black...
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda paid official visits to Jamaica and Barbados last week. He was in Jamaica from April 13-15 and in Barbados from April 15-17. In both countries, President Kagame spoke of the need to strengthen the direct contact...
In England, whose governance system we shamelessly plagiarise, Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently received a letter of resignation from his justice minister. In a letter to the PM after Bojo achieved the dubious honour of being the first British...
It is good news, as was recently reported by Education Minister Fayval Williams, that the majority (73 per cent by her estimate) of the 120,000 primary and high-school students who went missing from the education system during the suspension of...
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is again in the throes of a troubling discord surrounding Jamaica’s announcement on April 1 that Kamina Johnson Smith, foreign affairs and foreign trade minister, will challenge the incumbent Patricia Scotland for...
I attended St George’s College for my secondary education. At that time, it was managed by Roman Catholic priests. A lot of emphasis was placed on the Christian religion and on Roman Catholicism in particular; so much so that I became a Roman...
It is very hard for some lawyers, more so for desperate legislators, to appreciate the limitations of the law, especially those statutes which carry criminal sanctions, to curb antisocial behaviour and change culture. We think that if you just...
Last week, a United States (US) federal court in the state of Massachusetts began hearing a case, previously highlighted in these columns, to which we invited the Jamaican authorities to pay attention: Mexico’s suit against a ream of American...
This newspaper has more than once invoked US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson’s explanation of the basis of the infallibility of final courts. It bears repeating, in fuller context, notwithstanding its elucidation recently by the island’s...
He came in last Wednesday, greeted by our prime minister and other top dignitaries, with the appropriate welcome. He is not quite a king, but Marcus Garvey would have been pleased because he did prophesy that a monarch would arrive from the east....
PUNCHING ABOVE INSTITUTIONAL AND FINANCIAL WEIGHT The Commonwealth has maintained a significant global profile. We can identify some reasons for this. At the forefront are the Commonwealth’s substantial convening power – at both political and...
The more crime surges, the more the gun-control debate comes to the fore. I always marvel at how much of a tendency we have to swing towards extremes. If it is not “disarm the population”, it is “free up the guns”, but there is a desperate need for...
