A small party in Barbados is taking regional governments and political parties to task over their response to the impact of the global economic crisis on the Caribbean. The People’s Empowerment Party (PEP), headed by David Comissiong fingers the political leadership in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago for their lethargic response  to a PEP [...]

The existence of Caricom (the Caribbean Community), the only organisation dedicated to the economic interests of the Caribbean countries, is at risk, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding has cautioned. “There are a number of things that are happening now that are destabilising and threatening the existence of Caricom,” he declared at the launch of Export [...]

Prime Minister Bruce Golding says Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean need to be liberated from the nostalgia of an era of protective market when they could punish their consumers as they chose, by shutting their borders so that foreign goods could not easily come in and consumers were condemned to substandard products. ‘We [...]

Raw, real, melodic. These are all words that describe the sound that comes out of Ruth Osman’s mouth. Osman, a Guyanese jazz singer and flautist, has been performing since she was a child. She started to take music lessons at age eight, beginning with the recorder and eventually moving on to voice and flute. Her [...]

The impact of the global recession on the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region has been severe and wide-ranging, but the region is now better positioned to weather the current downturn and is expected to emerge from the financial crisis earlier than the advanced economies, according to the latest Regional Economic Outlook: Western Hemisphere report [...]

The application of Jamaica’s General Consumption tax (GCT) to previously exempt books is causing ire among some who see the move as an attack on literacy in a country struggling to eliminate illiteracy with a less than lustrous education system. “Hard to believe we have to take time to oppose a literary tax in this [...]

Caribbean governments have been urged to provide financial support for the Regional Coordinating Mechanism of the Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP), at the opening in St Lucia of PANCAP’s twelfth meeting. Dominica’s Minister of Health and Chair of PANCAP, John Fabien, says he is firmly convinced that the time is opportune for [...]

1. What are the Summits of the Americas? The Summits of the Americas are periodic meetings that bring together the thirty-four democratically elected Heads of State and Government of the Americas to discuss and make decisions on issues of relevance for the region. 2. How many Summits of the Americas have taken place? When and [...]

So-called ‘Constitutional Lawyers’ seem incapable of grasping the ramifications of the lawsuit(s) brought by Abe Dabdoub which question the presence of dual-nationals in Parliament. There has never been a legal government in Jamaica. There have always been dual nationals or those with some other impediment which would have tainted each and every Parliament. One might [...]

Beyond the constitutional issues and court rulings which made possible the recent West Portland by-election, and regardless of that result, the people of Jamaica were the overall losers. The audacity of this statement is not that I am a comrade, which I unabashedly am. Instead, it is because both major parties had the opportunity to [...]