WE HAVE a lazy Parliament. So it was some good news to read in last Tuesday's Gleaner (February 16), "House to focus on laws", that "the Government has stated its intention to advance the legislative agenda of the House of Representatives before the 2009-2010 term ends on March 17".
THE PNP has been on the road saying there is another way, a better way to go about managing the country's problems. There is a shocking revelation why they are right. The Government has admitted, and the IMF too, that it did not think sufficiently about the consequences of the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) for pension funds and pensioners.
IT ALMOST seems a waste of time discussing Jamaica's problems anymore. Everyone knows what they are and what the solutions are. But no one, from top to bottom, seems interested in doing what has to be done.
IT WAS a grand and royal farewell last week to the king of Caribbean academia and culture, Professor the Honourable Rex Nettleford, vice-chancellor emeritus of the University of the West Indies. Last Tuesday in Jamaica could properly be dubbed Rex Nettleford Day, as from morning till night, the country paid tribute to this colossus of a man who, even at 77, was still gone too soon.
PARAGRAPH 12 of the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies accompanying the Letter of Intent to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) boldly states that "to help protect the poor the social safety net will be significantly enhanced". This clear statement of concern for the most economically disadvantaged in our society enjoys very wide support.
Today, I will have to write about two rather different things, although they are related in a perverse sort of way, the failure of our politics to use self-government and Independence to build a prosperous and peaceful society, which was perfectly...
Finance Minister Audley Shaw has, with the Jamaica Debt Exchange Programme (JDX) pulled off a tremendous feat which, until it actually happened, had seemed unimaginable.
It has been reported in the media that Jamaica's letter of intent to the International Monetary Fund indicates a policy shift with regard to the payment of external examination fees for secondary students.
That disgraced cop arrested for allegedly trading arms with criminals has not just incalculably deepened pubic mistrust and apprehension of the police.
In 1974, Cheryl Payer wrote what must still be considered the classic on International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities, titled The Debt Trap: The International Monetary Fund and the Third World.
It is being advocated, with great strength, that the programme that will now drive our economic fortunes, and which has been outlined by the Government during the last few weeks, represents a position that admits of no alternative.
He is being deified in death but when that intellectual tornado named Rex Nettleford raged among us, many of those now granting him almost-worshipful glory stoutly refused to listen to him.
Jamaica has had a long history of very able and sometimes excellent finance ministers - the best the region has produced. They go back to Donald Sangster, Noel Nethersole, Vernon Arnett, David Coore, Edward Seaga and Omar Davies.
My colleagues Peter Espeut, Howard Thompson, Michael Franklin and Cynthia Cooke have been contributing to the debate on the critique of the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) exams by Education Minister Andrew...
As I sat in Gordon House last Tuesday night listening as the Prime Minister made his contribution to the debate on the Government's economic strategies, .. R. Anne Shirley
The tragic natural events which altered the present and future reality of Haiti will forever be engraved in the memories of millions of world citizens who watched the 'CNN-ised' version of the aftermath of the tragedy.
Prime Minister Bruce Golding told Guyanese journalist Ricky Singh, "there is hardly a functioning government in Haiti." After 2006, Haiti did improve from being a failed state to a fragile state. By mid-2009, reports on its political stability, executive-legislative relations, technical competence and national security were becoming more positive.
Years ago, when crime was getting out of hand and the government of the day launched a Home Guard programme to help deal with it, the then prime minister, Michael Manley, volunteered to serve and set an example. The police high command quietly talked him out of it. The prime minister on the streets would have been a security nightmare.
The Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) has been floated. Already bolstered by the broad support of bankers and security dealers, there is now an open 'invitation' to the body of domestic holders of Government of Jamaica debt to participate.
We can now end the debate about the debate - or non-debate. The People's National Party (PNP) has decisively lost that round in the media and in the court of public opinion. How will the party fare on Tuesday when the real debate, for which it can no longer plead insufficient preparation time, begins?
American author John Maxwell in his book on the laws of leadership placed the 1976 victory of Jimmy Carter as president of the United States in context. He argues that it was the forces of change and Carter's relative 'unknownness' that brought him to power, rather than his appeal.
