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TRINIDAD & TOBAGO’S POLITICAL TIMEBOMB

By in Print

In January 1757 on the island of Nevis, a baby boy was born out of a adulterous affair of a French woman and a Scottish man, that little boy spent his first 11 yrs of life in the Caribbean in an impoverished state. However, the Caribbean experience would shape his thinking forever. The baby boy was Alexander Hamilton credited as one of the fathers of the Constitution of the United States with James Madison. The association with Hamilton shaped the thinking of James Madison who later told the US Congress: “First. That there be prefixed to the Constitution a declaration, that all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.   That Government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right of acquiring and using property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining...

CAN AGRICULTURE SAVE OUR ECONOMY?

By in Print

A few weeks ago I read an article by Dr. Clyde Mascoll, a Barbadian economist, which really startled me. The following is the quote from the article in which he spoke about the agricultural sector of Barbados: ‘’On the other hand, the fact that the tourism sector accounts for about 60 per cent of imported vegetables suggests that there may be some opportunity to forge greater linkages between the sector and non-sugar agriculture. This observation is naïve if it does not take into consideration the non-price factors that influence the demand for vegetables in the tourism sector. These factors appear more important, which may very well explain the reliance on imports in spite of the high tariffs that are applied to vegetables being sourced from non-CARICOM countries during the local growing season. The common external tariff and other duty charges, which amount to 110 per cent duty, do...

ON DESTINY (3)

By in Quotes

When you purchase a bottle of milk, you look at the expiry date and ensure that you use all of it before the expiry date. You want to ensure that you make good use of the money that you spent. When you were born you had an expiry date stamped on you by God, and thus we must believe that He wants to use us fully before our expiry date, and like milk we must stay in places he wants us to be so that we don’t spoil before our expiry date.

John Peters

CASTRIES, CASTRIES – WHO SHALL SAVE YOU?

By in Print

Former Prime Minister Sir John Compton, in the swearing- in ceremony of the last administration he led, indicated that a “girdle of slums which surrounds our city is a veritable incubator for crime that threatens our daily lives.” He went on to inform the nation that The Ministry of Housing, Urban Renewal and Local Government had been given the challenge “to tackle the problem with determination and imagination”.  Seven years after his death, his desire for that change has not occurred. As a La Tocian ( resident of La Toc), I drive from to Castries with great sadness as I look at how a strip of land from Tapion to Manoel Street has been left in total decay. SLASPA has virtually abandoned their responsibility. Yet this is the entrance to Castries, our capital. When Sir John shared his thoughts seven years ago, as a former Chief Engineer who had worked with him, I felt led to put...

UNIVERSAL SECONDARY EDUCATION – A FAILED EXPERIMENT?

By in Print

For 52 of my 52 years on Earth, I have had been involved in the teaching profession, my grandfather was a teacher, my father was a teacher, my aunt was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, my wife teaches. I have taught for over 40 yrs, whether it was teaching my friends in my neighbourhood at the age of 12 some basic maths, to Form One to Form 5 students  in my adult years  as my contribution to their development. Several years ago when Universal Secondary Education was introduced in Trinidad and Tobago, I recall a conversation with my sister in which she lamented the decision as she was experiencing the failure of the system in the school she taught. Successive Governments have attempted to bring reform in Trinidad and I believe that there is acknowledgment there, that errors were made. In St Lucia we implemented Universal Secondary Education and we have covered our eyes seemingly...

AUSTERITY OR EFFICIENCY – WHICH FIRST?

By in Print

In the field of physics and astronomy there is a principle called escape velocity. Escape velocity is the speed that an object needs to be traveling to break free of a planet’s gravitational pull. An object leaving the surface of Earth needs to be going 7 miles per second, or nearly 25,000 miles per hour to leave without falling back to the surface. Economists have also embraced the term to describe the need for an economy to grow at a sufficiently fast rate to escape a recession and to return to a long run rate of economic growth. In carrying the analogy further, the escape velocity will change depending on the size of the planet. The smaller the planet the lower will be the escape velocity. However it is not so, small island states somehow need higher growth rates to escape a recession and to have a long run rate of economic growth. The ECCB has suggested a rate of around 7% for St....

TROUBLED BRIDGES – TROUBLED WATERS

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In 1970 Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had put together a song called – Like a Bridge over Troubled Waters, which became a hit and has remained as one of the classics of that era. The Bible speaks of a crippled man who sat for 38 years waiting for the angel to come down to trouble the water so that he can receive his healing. He missed every opportunity because someone else went in before him until Jesus came and he received his miracle. So for 2000 years or more we have understood the phrase – Troubled Waters. It has been etched in our spiritual lives. Within recent months we have now come to an understanding of the phrase -Troubled Bridges. We first had the Bonne Terre Bridge, built as four lanes with an alignment that now suggests that the new Hotel being constructed will be affected if the road is so widened. Both the horizontal and vertical alignments are wrong, the support...

WHERE IS THE ROAD MAP TO ECONOMIC RECOVERY?

By in Print

One of the mistakes I believe the Government of St Lucia made, was not to fully articulate a road map to the population as to how we are to climb ourselves out of this miry fiscal clay. While the 5% pay cut has dominated the discussions, by the government’s own admission, this measure will create a saving of less than 20% of the budget deficit for this year. It does not solve the problem. The Government of Barbados has to be applauded in that they chose to present such a road map to the country and have created a nineteen (19) month Fiscal Adjustment Programme and a Medium Term Growth and Development Strategy. The Fiscal Adjustment Programme has fifty eight (58) budgetary policies and the Medium Term Growth and Development Strategy has four hundred and fifty nine (459) strategic initiatives. St. Lucia must do the same. We cannot be running around as headless chickens splattering blood...

Vision Commissioner: WE ARE AT WAR! by Toni Nicholas

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Written by Toni Nicholas for The St Lucia Star Newspaper. Sunday’s “Open Mic” with Michael Chastanet on DBS was no doozy. To make it clear, Mike is no talk show host, journalist or columnist, regardless of what you have heard before. The show too, after being on air for several weeks now, is no talkingpoint. I have watched now and again, but have never been drawn in past the first fifteen minutes. However, this past Sunday I did manage to sit through “Mike’s show” only because of his guest. I have always had time for consultant engineer and member of the recently named Vision Commission John Peter, either through his contributions to various newspapers, his comments on topical subjects in the news and these days as a pastor (but that’s for another show). But somehow, his contributions were just allowed to float in mid-air and not anchored by a less than astute host. A few things he...

CAN THE MOUSE ROAR?

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In 1997 I went to Anguilla to do a project on the Wallblake Airport. It was the first major construction project that a St. Lucian construction company, then B& D Construction Ltd, had tendered and won, and I was tasked to be the Project Manager. I lived there for about one year with a group of St. Lucians many of whom stayed back and became residents. It was my first experience with the little mouse that roared. In the 1960’s Anguilla was tied to St.Kitts and Nevis; however Anguillans were of the view that they were being neglected by then Premier Bradshaw. Ronald Webster led a group of Anguillans and staged our first coup in the English speaking Caribbean. The story ends with the British sending in paratroopers and the completely confused state of these soldiers when there was intense jubilation that they were landing in Anguilla. The “coup’ ended and Anguilla has remained a...

REINVENTING GOVERNMENT IN ST LUCIA

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On Tuesday of this week I visited a Government Department at the Waterfront to drop off a document. I approached a young lady to hand deliver the document, only to be greeted with the most profound expression of impertinence. This young woman was probably younger than my daughter, and I froze for a while in complete shock. It was only because I am not linguistically challenged and more so constrained by the love of Christ, that my response was not filled with a volcanic explosion of expletives. There is a principle of Physics called inertia, and if you understand that principle, it is the key to reinventing government within St. Lucia. Inertia is defined as followed: ‘A property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force ‘ If an object is at rest it will remain at rest until an external force acts upon...

THE HOUSE NEGRO AND THE FIELD NEGRO IN CARIBBEAN POLITICS

By in Print

Malcolm X placed the distinction of the house negro and the field negro in the perfect context in a speech he gave at Michigan State University on January 23rd 1963. The symbolism is evident in Caribbean politics. He said the following: ”So you have two types of Negro. The old type and the new type. Most of you know the old type. When you read about him in history during slavery he was called “Uncle Tom.” He was the house Negro. And during slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negro usually lived close to his master. He dressed like his master. He wore his master’s second-hand clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master’s house–probably in the basement or the attic–but he still lived in the master’s house. So whenever that house Negro identified himself,...

AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE 5% PAYCUT

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The need to deal with the fiscal deficit has forced the Government of St. Lucia to consider the unpalatable dose of a five percent pay cut for public servants. The economists are still not sure that such moves by the largest employer in small island economies actually do work. I also have my doubts. I read with interest, an article in BBC News Magazine which reported that a famous academic paper often used to make a case for austerity cuts contained major errors. In January 2010 Professor Carmen Reinhart and former chief economist at the IMF, Ken Rogoff presented a research paper entitled – Growth in a Time of Debt. The paper provided academic support to their conclusion that when the size of a country’s debt rises above 90% then economic growth slows dramatically. The article then introduces Thomas Herndon, a young graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, who took as his...

DEBT TRAP OR PONZI SCHEME – THE OECS ECONOMIES

By in Print

I listening with interest to an very irate Customs Officer expressing his disgust that he will be losing five percent of his hard earned income to finance Carnival revelry. He stated that Carnival is a business and he could not come to terms with the Government making a case for the removal of the subsidy on sugar and then giving duty free concessions and $ 1.1 million dollars to Carnival. He posited – Why should I contribute to these Band owners plunder? There is undoubtedly a need for a pre-frontal discourse on the debt situation of St. Lucia, and the conversation has to honest and factual. During the Small States Biennial Conference of the Commonwealth Secretariat held at Malborough House in July 2010, Ms Samantha Attridge presented a paper entitled ” Dealing with the Looming Debt Crisis of Commonwealth Small Vulnerable Economies”, It is an excellent analysis of...

THE NORTH COAST ROAD – A MYTH?

By in Print

The North Coast Road has been spoken of over the last ten years as an alternative route to the Barre D’Isle. Yet the conversation has never been supported by any sound economic or engineering basis for its pursuance. Are the merits of this road a myth? Over the last 25 years I have been involved in the development of infrastructure in St. Lucia in the capacity of Chief Engineer on the side of the Employer, as a Contractor for local firms, however never been blessed to be part of the chosen few to do consultancy work for the Ministry. My involvement in the development of the Millennium Highway was a valuable lesson in understanding the interface of infrastructure and economic development. In 1992, there was a thrust by Sir John to link Castries with Cul deSac, Sir John rightfully believed that the Morne Road was an obstacle to the development of Castries and that there was need to link...