Caribbean Political Economy

Dire Economic Prospects for the Caribbean shown by ECLAC report, Norman Girvan

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The Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean, published today (21st July) by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, shows a dire situation and prospects for Caribbean countries. The cost of the global financial and economic crisis to the subregion is estimated at a huge 10% of GDP in 2009. 10 of 14 Caribbean countries experienced negative growth in that year, the worst performers being the eight countries of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU), which contracted by 7.3% on average…

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Building the Greater Caribbean, Fabian Badejo

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Keynote Address at the Seminar-Workshop “Dimensions of Caribbean Space–Building the Greater Caribbean: Towards its own Agenda”, Centro Leon, Santiago, The Dominican Republic, 8 -10 July, 2010

I greet you all in the name of ALL our ancestors in this now and here of the Caribbean we all love and call home, if home is where the heart is or wants to belong. I greet you in the name of Rex Nettleford and all the other luminaries who have been called to higher glory but who have left us a legacy of excellent work…

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Global Financial Crisis, IFIs and the Caribbean, Owen Arthur

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Speech delivered at the 28th Annual Conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean (ICAC) on June 25th, 2010. Owen Arthur was Prime Minister of Barbados from 1994 to 2008.

This presentation is intended to direct attention, deliberately so, to one matter which ought to be at the centre of public discourse, but which has lacked the focus it merits. It has to do with the response of the international financial institutions to the plight that our region has faced as a result of the global economic crisis…

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Commentary: Owen Arthur - the Caribbean Commissioner the region should have, Sir Ronald Sanders

Woman Power and Leadership Styles: Lessons from Trinidad and Tobago, Meryl James-Sebro

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Meryl James-Sebro interprets the rise of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissesar

Well, we reach. Early in the evening of May 24, 2010, Hazel Brown’s everlasting ‘Put a Woman’ campaign bore its first full fruit. Trinidad and Tobago declared Kamla Persad-Bissessar its first woman Prime Minister. And despite the expected questions, concerns about coalitions and acknowledged challenges about managing a testosterone-laden side, feminists, gender advocates and activists can’t help but sing victory songs…

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Jamaica Civil Society’s Bid for Change

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Editorial in the Barbados The NationNews, June 7, 2010

IT WAS inevitable, as the bloody Christopher “Dudus” Coke saga continued taking its horrible toll on Jamaica, that representative civil society groups would recognise their obligations to become involved with urgent creative “rescue initiatives”…

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Trinidad and Tobago Election: A New Era? Colin Frederick

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This analysis by a COHA Associate correctly identifies corruption, crime, Prime Ministerial arrogance and general misgovernance as the basic factors in the landslide victory of Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s  People’s Partnership coalition in the elections of May 24, 2010 in Trinidad and Tobago. At the same time it underestimates the historic significance of the coalition of five political parties/political movements that came together in the People’s Partnership, which crosses traditional ethnic lines and constitutes a new feature in the political landscape of the country with Caricom’s largest economy–Norman.

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Caricom: To Bruce or Not To Bruce? That is the Question, Rickey Singh

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Some Caricom leaders and officials are reportedly grappling with the tenuous difference of having to show solidarity with a fellow Head of Governmenrt under enormous pressures at home and from Washington, without appearing to sanction known political interference in a very sensitive judicial case involving an alleged drug baron and a foreign government.

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Jamaica’s business is the Caribbean’s business, Sir Ronald Sanders

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The widely publicised bloody clashes over the last few days between law enforcement agencies and armed gangs in Jamaica are as bad for the economic and social well-being of the people of Caribbean countries as they are for Jamaicans…

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Caribbean Youth Battle for Public Education, Yarimar Bonilla

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Yarimar Bonilla teaches anthropology at the University of Virginia. From In The Diaspora, Stabroek News

The University of Puerto Rico (UPR), one of the largest universities in the Caribbean with close to 65,000 students across its 11campuses, has been paralyzed since April 21 due to a student strike. ..The broader context for the student strike action is the increasing move towards privatization of public services that has characterized the island’s government in recent years…

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Careless with CARICOM, Sir Shridath Ramphal

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As ‘West Indians’, as ‘Caribbean people’, we face a basic contradiction of oneness and otherness, a basic paradox of kinship and alienation. Much of our history is the interplay of these contrarieties. But they are not of equal weight….Today, CARICOM and all it connotes, is the hallmark of that triumph, and it is well to remember the processes which forged it - lest we forget, and lose it…

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