PNM-UNC meeting again but eyes are on new poll

PORT-OF-SPAIN — Another meeting has been scheduled for today between the People’s National Movement of Prime Minister Patrick Manning and the United National Congress of former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, their seventh, to resolve the post-election governance impasse.

But increasingly the focus is shifting to new general election, with Panday disclosing, after a meeting with the Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC) on Monday, that the Commission was ready to conduct new general election on July 8, a time frame that coincides with that set by his party.

However, Prime Minister Manning, while not committing himself to an election date before the conclusion of a probe into the conduct of the EBC by a commission of inquiry that is scheduled to start public hearing by March 13, said he was planning to convene Parliament by April 9, the latest date, constitutionally, for this to happen.

Manning, who had previously spoken of new election by July 2003, said that he and his PNM colleagues were still hoping that the UNC would modify its approach when they meet today.

This, however, does not seem likely in view of Panday’s latest position, following his meeting with the EBC, that his party would stage public demonstrations as part of a campaign of civil disobedience if it turns out to be true that the Manning administration was going to arrest UNC parliamentarians to ensure the PNM has a majority to elect a Speaker for the convening of the new Parliament.

Manning has denied any such plan but continues to speak optimisically of being able to convene parliament before the April 9 deadline, leading to speculations of a likely defection from the UNC which, like the PNM, had secured 18 seats at the December 10 poll.

Panday has dismissed Manning’s threat to impose, if necessary, a state of emergency, saying that he would not be deterred from pursuing the civil disobedience campaign should any of the UNC’s elected representatives be arrested to provide the PNM with a manufactured majority to elect a Speaker.

So far as the probe into the EBC was concerned, Panday said that this was simply a device to delay holding a new general election, pointing out that he has been assured by the EBC that the current lists of eligible voters “are the best they have ever been”.

Complaints received by the EBC for the last general election amounted to 5,000 for an electoral register of some 800,000 eligible voters.

Regional murder rates keep climbing

BRIDGETOWN — The murder rates keep climbing in a number of Caribbean Community states, with Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago ranking as the top two among the major member countries of CARICOM, followed by Guyana and Barbados in that order.

By yesterday, against a background of rising criminal violence, Jamaica had chalked up its unenviable record of some 140 murders just for the first two months of this year, with the killings of four persons within the past three days.

Trinidad and Tobago’s figure had climbed to some 32 with the killing of a 32 year-old man by an unknown gunman yesterday while the Ministry of National Security was intensifying its anti-crime strategy, launched on Monday, under the code name of a snake, “Operation Ananconda”.

In Guyana, where there has been a series of killings and daring robberies within recent weeks, there have been nine known cases of murder, including that of a 29 year-old cash-crop farmer who was stabbed to death.

Of the four major CARICOM states, Barbados continues to have the lowest rate of known murders with 14 last year. But with three murders already reported for the year and a wave of criminal violence and robberies, the police remain on high alert, especially in areas frequented by tourists.

The killing of one of our employees on a bus by two armed men inspired the Jamaica Observer to editorially lament yesterday why Jamaica has come to such a tragic stage with the spate of murders, with a record 1,139 last year.

The Observer’s employee, Michael Thompson, was shot to death on the bus on Saturday because one of the two armed men said he looked like a policeman.

“Why have we come to this? How did we come to this? asked the newspaper, “that a life can be snuffed out, coldly, unremorsefully, because he looked like a policeman; that 1,139 people are murdered in a year and we are not angry. That we are not outraged…”

CDB cites growth in Jamaica, Guyana

GEORGETOWN — Jamaica and Guyana were the only two countries of the Caribbean Community that experienced positive economic growth in 2001, according to the President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr Compton Bourne.

The CDB President, currently on a four-day official visit to Guyana, said that for the rest of the region there was either “slow or negative growth”.

The Guyana-born Bourne, who on Monday was formally awarded the nation’s highest honour, Order of Excellence (OE), is part of a joint mission of officials of the CDB and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The visit is in accordance with the programme of activities of a Joint CDB-IDB Task Force, established to map out a blueprint for restructuring the economy of the CARICOM countries with the main focus on formulating proposals for strengthening the region to face the challenges of sustaining and promoting development.

The Task Force has already visited six of the Community’s countries.

Taiwan factor in CARICOM

BRIDGETOWN — The current official visit to Taiwan by the Prime Minister of Belize, Said Musa, is viewed as the latest reminder of a division within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in the face of the region’s governments’ claim of pursuing coordination in foreign policy.

While recognising the right of every sovereign nation to pursue its foreign policy, the Daily Nation of Barbados yesterday editorially questioned how much longer five of the CARICOM states — Belize, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, Grenada and St Kitts and Nevis — “intend to sustain” a failed pro-Taiwan policy that “exposes a weakness within the Community”.

The newspaper said that Musa’s three-day official visit to Taiwan will once again raise questions about the coordination of the region’s foreign policy initiatives and the extent to which the governments are indeed “singing from the same hymn sheet”.

Except for the five, which are among some 30 countries of the 189 member states of the United Nations that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan, all the other Caribbean Community nations recognise the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate and lawful government of the Chinese people.

The Nation said that it is the right of every independent nation to either sever or establish diplomatic relations with any other nation, but argued:

“However, when they are part of a community of sovereign states that wish to be perceived as speaking with one voice, or when they keep emphasising their commitment to foreign policy co-ordination in dealing with the rest of the global community, then perhaps there is validity in the questions being raised over the evident division in CARICOM in relation to the PRC and Taiwan…”

OECS targets Canadian market

CASTRIES — The countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) have set their sights on expanding their exports to the Canadian market and are in the process of working out how best to achieve this goal, according to the St Lucia-based OECS Secretariat.

In cooperation with the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the OECS High Commission in Ottawa, Canada, has organised a two-day seminar for next week in St Lucia for “export-ready” business enterprises in the sub-region.

Organised around the theme “Doing business with Canada”, the March 6-7 seminar will involve representatives from regional chambers of commerce, national development corporations and ministries of trade, OECS Export Development Unit and Caribbean Export.

The Barbados-based Canadian High Commissioner to the Eastern Caribbean, Sandelle Scrimshaw will be one of the speakers at the formal opening of the seminar.