Editorial

In recent months there has been much discussion in the regional media about the issue of devising new institutional arrangements for the management of Caricom’s business.

In its details, the abduction and savage murder of businessman Farouk Kalamadeen pose the same searing questions that the state, the government and the people have faced repeatedly since 2002.

The murder of Mr Farouk Kalamadeen marks another bloody milestone in the history of crime in this country.

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard. 

Paraguay does not usually feature prominently on people’s political radar screens, not even in Latin America.

The recent passing of two very different regional poets, offers an opportunity to consider the diminishing role of literary culture in the contemporary Caribbean.

The depth of the food crisis in Haiti draws the Caribbean into the general food crisis afflicting many parts of the world, including the affected states in the continent of Africa.

The Federative Republic of Brazil has embarked on one of the most ambitious strategic initiatives in its history.

The recently launched consultations by the government on the cost of living are useful insofar as they make a real attempt to gauge from the grass roots the items that produce sticker shock and the structural problems that result in undue price increases.

Colombia’s raid into Ecuadorian territory and the subsequent revelations about the files on Raúl Reyes’ computer have done more damage to President Chávez’s grand hemispheric projects than anything Washington in its wildest dreams could have conceived of.

Vaccination Week in the Americas officially ends today. Now in its sixth year, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) coordinated activity has pushed not only for infant immunization, but for older children and adults as well, to receive vaccines that would prevent them from contracting certain diseases.

Last week, in commenting on the surprise appointment of Carolyn Rodrigues as  Guyana’s new Foreign Minister, we raised more questions than answers about whether she would succeed in reviving the ministry and bolstering the country’s faltering image abroad.

Had President Bharrat Jagdeo not been a member of the cabinet for nearly fifteen years, his latest instruction for an investigation into illegalities at the Guyana Revenue Authority’s Customs and Trade Administration would have been an impressive initiative to excise the cancer of corruption.

What do we in the Caribbean Community want from the United States at this time?

With the price of crude oil recently hovering around US$115 a barrel, the perils of our planet’s addiction to petroleum have never been clearer.

At a poorly attended consultation on governance and security recently at the Umana Yana for the poverty reduction strategy paper, the Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Luncheon spoke positively of the progress that had been achieved in governance and transparency.

Last Wednesday morning a security guard on his way to work was killed by a pack of dogs which had escaped from their yard.

The news on the BBC on Thursday that the Spanish police had arrested 87 Nigerians in and around Madrid, suspected of defrauding thousands of people in the United States and Europe of over 20 million euros (US$31,807,929.76 or $6.4 billion) in a postal and internet lottery scam, was astounding because it should not have happened.

So, a new Foreign Minister has been named to take over from Rudy Insanally.

A few days ago, on the fifth Global Day for Darfur British prime minister Gordon Brown said “the eyes of the world are rightly focused on the millions of men, women and children in the region who continue to start each day with the fear of violence, abduction, rape or death.”