Archive for July 3rd, 2009
Crop Over 2009 is in the air
Friday, July 3rd, 2009‘Not all the facts
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
President Bharrat Jagdeo (left) addressing the media on the Guyana/Barbados immigration issue yesterday morning. (GP)
by TRACY MOORE
in Georgetown, Guyana
“WE ARE NOT getting all the facts.”
So says Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo as he spoke to the Press after breaking from the Caucus of 30th Summit Of Heads Of Government Of CARICOM at the Guyana International Conference Centre in Georgetown yesterday.
Addressing the immigration controversy between Barbados and Guyana once again, Jagdeo told reporters, that he did not believe that he was getting all the facts. “We have the names of the people who were deported from Barbados and the figures differ substantially from the ones announced,” Jagdeo said.
“And we can deal with this in a rhetorical way. If I was asked to leave and I say I don’t want to leave as an option and that I prefer to stay, but you say fine, then I have a choice. But if I am asking you to leave and I don’t have an option to stay, you have been deported.
“Whether in their books they are going to treat it that you can return later, that is a different matter, but you are deported at that time because you don’t have a choice. It is all rhetoric and I don’t want to deal with this through rhetoric,” Jagdeo said.
Prime Minister David Thompson said last week Sunday and again two days ago when he arrived in Guyana that only four Guyanese were deported since the amnesty was announced June 1 and that the additional 20plus were “asked to leave” the country.
But Jagedo said yesterday that “the figures are wrong”.
“We have the numbers that were sent back [or] deported from Barbados, and this is what was given by our immigration, the receiving state. When I look at what the Prime Minister said it is a totally different number.
“Barbados is claiming that it is a problem of information flow and all of that, so I think we may have to look at it together to see what I can do in this area,” he added.
He also said the treatment of Guyanese nationals in Barbados had been described as “Gestapo-like”.
“This is what we have to investigate. People have alleged that this has happened and then shipped off to the airport without any process. How do we investigate in Barbados, because that is the allegation being made, but Barbados seems not to know.”
He said despite all the assurances that his government had received from the highest political level from time to time, “the situation on the ground was substantially different from the rhetoric or assurances that were being given”.
The president said he too had experience ill-treatment from Barbados’ Immigration Department, “so no one has to tell me, I have experienced it”.
“I have gone to Barbados when I was minister of finance and have had difficulties going through the immigration and I didn’t use the diplomatic line . . . . And until they opened my passport and until they saw that I was minister of finance, the questioning was irrelevant, and they treated me already in a sterotype fashion,” he said.
However, the Guyanese leader said he recognised that each country had a sovereign right to deal with its immigration policies, “but there are excesses that sometimes we observe and we have documented cases where there have been excess and this concerns us greatly”.
“We feel that people should be treated with dignity in the region, particularly Caribbean people, and this sets back the integration movement.
“We can treat people who come to a region sometimes with a little backpack, a slipper and short pants better than we treat people who live in this region. It really undermines the entire integration process,” he charged.
When asked about his responsibility to create the kind of environment in Guyana to curb migration, the president said:
“Migration is a fact of life and people will go the economic opportunities that they can find [in] any part of the world. There was a time when Barbadians came to Guyana and they found a welcoming environment.
“We had a very difficult time for 30 years; we did not have any democracy and CARICOM did not do much about it . . . . We had a bad patch. The economy was run down, we had a huge debt situation and over that period a lot of our people migrated.
“Until now, we are still reeling from the effects of that period; so we cannot generate high-paying jobs or enough of them to keep enough of our people.
“But that doesn’t mean that any country has the right to treat our people in a disparaging fashion,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said he would meet with Thompson over the next two days to discuss a bi-lateral engagement, “but the [Barbadian] political authorities must deal with [the immigration matter]”.
tracymoore @nationnews.com
BELOW are statistics from Guyana’s Immigration Office which it said were deportees from Barbados
January 7
February 7
March 16
April 16
May 29
June 24
TOTAL 99
Numbers who were refused entry into Barbados
January 8
February 3
March 18
April 15
May 7
June 3
TOTAL: 54
JUDGE ON TRIAL Hayton in hot water
Friday, July 3rd, 2009Nazma Muller nmuller@trinidadexpress.com
Moves are being made to remove Justice David Hayton from the Caribbean Court of Justice, according to sources, following his comments in a Sunday Express interview, “Speed up Wheels of Justice”.
On Tuesday, CCJ President Michael de la Bastide placed an advertisement in the Daily Express reprimanding the British law professor on what he considered to be “inappropriate and improper” public statements on “political and constitutional issues”.
At a meeting that same day, de la Bastide met with Attorney General John Jeremie and the matter was discussed, and it was felt that Justice Hayton’s comments had serious consequences for the CCJ, in particular how they would affect public confidence in the regional tribunal, say sources.
Justice Hayton’s interview covered a wide range of issues, including the power of veto that Prime Minister Patrick Manning has in the selection of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Commissioner of Police, the Solicitor General and the Chief Parliamentary Counsel.
He also questioned Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday’s resistance to replacing the Privy Council with the CCJ as this country’s final Court of Appeal, having signed up for the CCJ’s establishment and going so far as to outbid Barbados for the headquarters to be here,
“It seems to me, already, under the Constitution, the Prime Minister has perhaps too much influence, so I don’t see the need quite so much for an executive presidency,” Justice Hayton said in the interview.
He also noted that as far as the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) was concerned, Prime Minister Patrick Manning has absolute powers over who actually stands for a constituency in an election. “And that means the leader of the PNM has much more power than the parties in England. You don’t have such power vested in the leader,” he noted.
On Tuesday, Attorney General John Jeremie indicated that the interview had caused great displeasure: “[Justice Hayton] has certainly stepped beyond the boundaries of ordinary judicial criticism and in a forum which is not appropriate. I know that as we speak that efforts are being made to find a resolution to that issue and I would prefer to say no more on that for the time being.”
Should Justice Hayton refuse to resign, his statements are enough grounds to begin proceedings to remove him, say sources. Indeed, de la Bastide hinted at the possibility in his advertisement when he stated that Justice Hayton broke a long-standing rule that judges should not comment on political and constitutional matters, except in judgments. And the CCJ places great importance in “maintaining a cordial relationship with both the Government and the Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago”, the statement said.
De la Bastide, who is a former chief justice of Trinidad and Tobago, is currently in Guyana attending a Caricom summit and could not be reached for comment. However, CCJ protocol and information officer Michael Lilla said he had no knowledge of Justice Hayton having tendered his resignation.
Caribbean states fight to ride out economic storm
Friday, July 3rd, 2009| Published on Friday, July 3, 2009 | Email To Friend Print Version | ||
| By Pascal Fletcher
BASSETERRE, St Kitts (Reuters) — The Caribbean’s small island states ride out hurricanes year after year, but they are fighting to stay afloat in a global economic storm that is battering rich and poor nations alike. Tiny nations like twin-island St Kitts and Nevis, a short chain of lush green volcanic cones set in an azure sea, have felt the shocks of the downturn and credit crunch as keenly as the winds and seas that lash them every summer. Their high dependence on tourism, remittances, investment flows, imports and commodity prices makes than all the more vulnerable to recent worldwide economic tremors that have shaken giants like the United States and China. Shock has followed shock. First, soaring oil prices last year pushed up energy and food import bills and swelled inflation. Then, recession in the United States and Europe cut tourism and investment flows. The International Monetary Fund forecasts real 2009 GDP for the eight-member Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU), which includes St Kitts and Nevis, will contract by 2.5 percent “reflecting a sharply-slowing global economy, declining tourist arrivals and foreign direct investment flows, and increased financial sector stresses.” “It’s been difficult, it’s not without pain, and we have gotten wet,” said Richard Skerritt, St Kitts and Nevis’ Tourism Minister, citing a 12 percent January-April drop in visitors from the United States. Since the local sugar industry closed in 2005, tourism has taken over from “King Sugar” as the economic mainstay on the twin-island state of 40,000 people and now contributes an estimated 40 percent of gross domestic product. Any dip in visitor activity is painful. The January-April visitor fall-off forced the country’s biggest resort, the St Kitts Marriott, to lay off 100 employees. “That was a shock, because in a small country, lay-offs hurt everybody,” Skerritt said. Nature too has taken its toll on the former British territory. Hurricane Omar, which pummeled St. Kitts and Nevis last year, forced the closure in October of the Four Seasons, the biggest resort on Nevis, which has still not reopened. To the east, Antigua and Barbuda’s hotels suffered a 30 percent decrease in occupancy and government revenue fell by 25 percent, Antigua Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said. St Kitts’ Skerritt said his government was fighting back. It had removed some duties and taxes to shield consumers from price rises in basic food, introduced stimulus measures for small hotels and negotiated hard with airlines and big resort operators to try to keep visitors coming. “We are weathering the storm better than most,” Skerritt told Reuters. St Kitts was banking on the Christophe Harbour project, a big new hotel, marina and golf course development on its southeast peninsula, to attract new visitors. Skerritt said the new resort was already impacting the local economy and had created some 100 new jobs. Citing another encouraging sign, he said St Kitts’ cruise passenger arrivals had increased by 150 percent in the last three years, from 200,000 to 500,000, thanks to the Port Zante cruise terminal which now had more than 50 shops. But spending by cruise visitors was sharply down across the Caribbean, retailers and tour operators said. “It’s the same story in Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, all the big retailers are down,” said Avi Sippy of Diamond Island Jewelers in Port Zante. In St Lucia, whose 170,000 population is one of the largest in the eastern islands, the government is putting a brave face on the situation. “Tourism arrivals remain fairly buoyant although there is a fair degree of discounting (of prices),” Foreign Affairs and Trade minister Rufus Bousquet told Reuters. “I’m not suggesting it’s a rose garden, but we’re paying our bills.” At a June summit in St Kitts of the Venezuelan-backed regional energy alliance PetroCaribe, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding warned that the recession could stoke social tensions and inequalities. “Poverty that had been reduced, we are in danger of that poverty returning … We fear a real danger that we will come out of this crisis with the gap between rich and poor countries widening,” Golding said. He demanded “a seat at the table” for small developing countries at global groupings like the G20. Some analysts see the cumulative shocks straining Caribbean unity. “There is a growing sense of every country for itself,” said David Jessop, executive director of the UK-based Caribbean Council, that specializes in Caribbean trade issues. “We’re now a year, a year and a half into the global economic crisis and the Caribbean hasn’t actually been able to agree a strategy,” Jessop added. Compounding their troubles, recent high-publicity fraud scandals and financial collapses have pummeled the region’s financial sector. Analysts say the case of Texas billionaire Allen Stanford and his Antigua-based banking operation, charged in the United States with running a “massive Ponzi scheme,” is another black eye for the Caribbean’s offshore finance sector. The charges have implicated Antigua’s top financial regulator, adding force to critics who say the region’s financial sector lacks adequate control and oversight. Similarly, the collapse earlier this year of the Trinidad-based Caribbean business conglomerate CL Financial has sent shock waves through the Eastern Caribbean’s financial system, the IMF says. “High government exposures, credit risk and liquidity risk present major threats to ECCU banking system stability,” the fund said in a report published in May. ECCU members are Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines. Many regional governments view calls from the developed world for the Caribbean to clean up its tax havens as unfair. But some are moving to sign multiple bilateral tax treaties to meet demands for more financial transparency and oversight. “It’s a good way to show transparency and to generate business,” said St Lucia Foreign Minister Bousquet. |
|||
Thirtieth meeting of CARICOM heads opens in Guyana
Friday, July 3rd, 2009| Published on Friday, July 3, 2009 | Email To Friend Print Version |
| GEORGETOWN, Guyana — The Thirtieth Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) opened in Georgetown, Guyana, on Thursday against the backdrop of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Grand Anse Declaration and Work Programme for the Advancement of the Integration Movement.
The Grand Anse declaration was signed in July 1989, in Grand Anse, Grenada. At least 14 Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), including two from the Associate Members, are expected in Georgetown, Guyana, for the Summit ,which was formally opened Thursday afternoon at the National Cultural Centre. The Thirtieth Meeting is hosted by Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo, lead Head of Government with responsibility for Agriculture, who assumed the Chairmanship of the Community on 1 July 2009. The outgoing Chairman is Dean Barrow, Prime Minister of Belize. Both Jagdeo and Barrow were due to address the opening ceremony, as well as Baldwin Spencer, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Tillman Thomas, Prime Minister of Grenada and Edwin Carrington, Secretary-General of CARICOM. The opening ceremony will also feature the presentation of the Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC), the Community’s highest award, to Percival J. Patterson, former Prime Minister of Jamaica. Prior to the ceremonial opening ceremony, the Heads of Government met in Caucus at the Guyana International Conference Centre (GICC). Business sessions of the Meeting will be held 3-4 July, also at the GICC. Those sessions will be devoted to discussions on four clusters of items: Economic Development, Human and Social Development; Strengthening the Community; and Strengthening Alliances/Forging New Relations. With regard to Economic Development, the Heads of Government will focus on the Regional impact of, and response to the global economic and financial crisis; developments related to the Tourism Sector; Developments related to Agriculture and Food Security; and matters related to Services. They will also consider the Regional Strategy for Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D); the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME); the free movement of persons and impediments to regional trade in goods. The issues and recommendations emanating from the Twentieth Meeting of the Prime Ministerial sub-committee on External Trade Negotiations, which was held at the CARICOM Secretariat on 1 July 2009, will also engage the attention of the Heads of Government in the Economic Development cluster of items. In the Human Development cluster, the issues on which the Heads of Government will deliberate include Realising the Nassau Declaration: The Health of the Region is the Wealth of the Region; the proposal for a special summit on Youth as well as crime and security. `The Road to Copenhagen: Strategic and Policy Issues Regarding the Region’s Climate Change Agenda, will be discussed under the cluster related to `Strengthening the Community’. The United Nations will be hosting a Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark (COP15) later this year and positions to be adopted by the Region’s negotiators will be endorsed by Heads of Government at this meeting. With regard to Strengthening Alliances/Forging New Relations, the CARICOM Heads of Government will exchange views with special guests including Kamalesh Sharma, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Yvo De Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and representatives of the International Financial Institutions. Discussions will also centre on the recently-concluded Fifth Summit of the America and CARICOM-US Relations. The Summit will conclude on Saturday 4 July. |
|
Thompson open to suggestions
Friday, July 3rd, 2009 
by Tracy Moore
in Georgetown Guyana
PRIME MINISTER DAVID THOMPSON said yesterday he was prepared to “consider a more structured approach to the readmission of overstays, whether through protocol or memorandum of understanding” with the Guyanese Government.
He also disclosed in Georgetown, Guyana during a Press Conference at the Cara Lodge that he was also prepared to look carefully at a guest worker programme in areas where the labour market may justify it in the future.
“In addition, I think it would be most useful to establish a formal mechanism to regulate consultations and information exchange between our chief immigration officers and senior personal,” he added.
He continued: “Above all, I will be reiterating to President Jagdeo my hope that Guyana will give favourable consideration to setting up a High Commission in Bridgetown, staffed with an appropriate number of professionals to handle the increasing consular needs of the Guyanese population in Barbados, as well as to promote significant bilateral opportunities.”
Meanwhile, he made it very clear that “Barabdos is not cherry picking”.
“Let us not get into who is cherry picking. We have met all of our commitments under the CSME and therefore nobody can accuse Barbados of cherry picking, least of all countries that may not have accede to the Caribbean Court of Justice’s (CCJ) jurisdiction or who may not met other obligations under CARICOM.”
Although he did not make direct reference, his comment came one month after St Vincent’s Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves responded to the new immigration policy in Barbados.
“You cannot expect to cherry-pick in the integration movement, the CSME. Freedom of movement is an important dimension of the CSME,” Gonsalves had said, although he did not name the CARICOM countries that in his view, were being too harsh in their immigration policies.
However, Thompson said yesterday that a recent CSME audit showed that Barbados was in full compliance with the CSME obligations and additionally, all restrictions had been removed and legislation amended where necessary.
He said Barbados had complied with the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas especially with the Freedom of Movement, but “if two countries are the poles to which the unskilled movers gravitate, especially in times of economic recession, how will they sustain their own economies, maintain social services and provide a win-win for all?
“It is these inconvenient truths that we need to have the courage as leaders to confront honestly, in a spirit of mutual understanding, not public rancour,” he charged.
BY THE BOOK
Friday, July 3rd, 2009by TRACY MOORE
in Georgetown, Guyana
GREETINGS: President of Guyana Bharrat Jagdeo (left) greeting Prime Minister David Thompson in the presence of CARICOM Ambassador Denis Kellman. (Picture by Antonio Miller/BGIS.)
IF EVIDENCE is produced of ill-treatment of Guyanese or any other CARICOM nationals, by empowered public officials, those officials will be disciplined appropriately.
Prime Minister David Thompson, in a Press conference held in Georgetown, Guyana yesterday, said his Government would be setting up “as soon as possible”, an independent review panel to investigate any claims from Guyanese about ill-treatment by Barbados immigration authorities.
In a one-hour, 28 minute Press conference held at the Cara Lodge in Georgetown, the Prime Minister said, a miniscule percentage of Guyanese had been deported from Barbados and some might view the “tactics” by the Immigration Department as “harsh”.
But he said: “My Government does not condone abuse of power, or inappropriate behaviour on the part of its officials, and if any evidence is produced that any of those empowered to take enforcement action have been excessive in the carrying out of their duties, they will be disciplined appropriately,” he said.
In addressing the media in a live broadcast beamed across the Caribbean, Thompson responded to reports and questions which ranged from abusive and degrading behaviour to those deported from Barbados, denials of a plane load of Guyanese being sent home, ethnic profiling of Guyanese living in Barbados, to a claim by the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Guyana, that 53 Guyanese were deported since May 5, of which 24 were sent back since the amnesty was instituted June 1.
In an earlier Press statement in Barbados, Thompson had announced that only four Guyanese had been deported since his new immigration policy for non-nationals came into effect on June,1.
Yesterday, in providing statistics, Thompson said between 2000 and 2008, more than 1 000 CARICOM nationals were admitted to Barbados under the Skilled National programme, of which over 40 per cent were from Guyana.
In 2008, some 5 608 work permits had been issued to CARICOM nationals of which 90 per cent were issued to Guyanese, and of the 1 717 student visas issued, 721 went to Guyanese nationals.
“If you look at the overall numbers as a percentage of the persons who move between the countries, it is miniscule and is not something for us to argue over,” he told the Press.
“What is more important is that in every instance whether the person is asked to leave, or is deported, that they are treated fairly and justly and to ensure that that happens in the future, they are entitled to apply to a tribunal review committee to take a look at the circumstances and advise Government on how matters of that sort should be dealt with,” he said.
The Prime Minister also disclosed that he had met with Guyana’s president Bharrat Jagdeo, and suggested that favourable consideration be given to the opening of a Guyana High Commission in Bridgetown, to handle the needs of the increasing number of Guyanese living here.
The Summit opens officially today and ends on Sunday.