Tomorrow we're 50, and it's time for sober reflections. What have been the achievements, failures, setbacks? Any comprehensive review would be too voluminous for a newspaper column. But a manageably small number of critical data points can provide a pretty good snapshot of achievements, failures and setbacks.
In His Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), Jesus told His disciples: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Fifty years of Independence, 174 years of freedom from physical slavery, and 64 years of Olympic participation. Our currency, national monuments and official accounts have a nice list of persons who are our heroes and heroic figures. However, let us try to do a shortlist of Jamaicans who have made Jamaica known.
On the eve of Emancipation 2012 and in the jubilee year of our Independence, Supreme Court judge Bryan Sykes made a landmark ruling in the case submitted to the court by Citizens United To Reduce The Cost Of Electricity (CURE) and claimants Betty-Ann Blaine, Dennis Meadows and Cyrus Rousseau on behalf of the Jamaican people, that the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) licence was, indeed, illegal and invalid.
A post-Independence nation's culture is akin to an individual's personality. They both 'inherit' traits from the 'parents', (the former colonialists and biological parents, respectively). They are both impacted and changed by subsequent environmental influences. By six to seven years of age, the vast majority of human beings fully develop their personalities.
The world is awash with cash. Really, rivers of it. In the United States alone, the Federal Reserve Board estimates that because of aggressive cost-cutting and declining real wages, firms have amassed over US$5 trillion, which they have parked in their bank accounts.
National development's single most important tool is education. For the past 50 years, despite governments' persistent neglect of their responsibilities to education, Jamaica has been blessed with iconic contributors to national development in the shape of our teachers. They nurtured our future.
We are on the verge of the nation's 50th anniversary of Independence. And just what have we done with Independence? Opinions are flying about, many - perhaps most - without any real basis for judgement other than gut feelings and selective recall.
As we think on Jamaica 50, Ian Boyne, one of my favourite columnists, went on a stomach-churning Michael Manley hero worship escapade last Sunday. It was perhaps an attempt to rescue the image of a prime minister who presided over the most devastating economic and social decline in Jamaica's post-independence history.
Recently, the new French president did what would many would describe as bold and unusual when he named a Cabinet which included an equal number of male and female ministers - a first in the country's history. The situation in France is not an isolated case.
In a recent article for 'Reason', Ira Stoll praised the 2012 Olympics - not only in the body but the title itself - as a 'Triumph of capitalism' (July 23, 2012). He's entirely correct - but not for the reason he thinks.
None has matched that record, let alone surpassed it, since Carl Stone wrote those words in The Sunday Gleaner of May 2, 1992. There is no living Jamaican anywhere in the world today, as Jamaica celebrates its 50th anniversary, who has contributed as much to Jamaica as Edward Phillip George Seaga. None...
The arrest of two of its parish council representatives, Michael Troupe and Sylvan Reid, on criminal charges is a crisis for the People's National Party (PNP) government. Most public-relations texts describe a crisis as an extraordinary event that adversely affects the integrity of a product, the reputation or financial stability of an organisation, or the health and well-being of employees, the community or the public at large.
Why is it that we suffer from adult-onset amnesia when it comes to the things we did in our childhood? Pardon my lack of alarm at the recent pronouncements by Superintendent of Police (SP) Gladys Brown-Campbell, but there is nothing new under the sun about children having sex or other type of intimate contact with their peers.
From colony to Independence - Part 2File PhotosPrincess Margaret talks with Norman Manley, opposition leader, shortly after her arrival at Palisadoes Airport on August 5, 1962.
Below are excerpts from junior foreign minister Arnaldo Brown's Sectoral Debate presentation to Parliament on July 10.Jamaica is indeed intricately linked to the global economy and tremendously...
News is such a fickle thing, because I was getting ready to write about the racist Trinidadian regime and the idea that the dropping of the Air Jamaica brand is nothing more than another attempt to 'denigrate' the region by an overly Hinducentric...
There we sat in a University of the West Indies (UWI) office back in 2006, brainstorming appropriate questions for the first national leadership and governance survey.
