The introduction was conducted at media briefing, via video conference involving the media in Guyana and Barbados.

In his remarks, CARICOM Secretary-General, Edwin Carrington highlighted Ambassador Mathurin’s long standing diplomatic career, accentuating her work as Permanent Secretary and Head of the Foreign Service in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica.

Carrington underscored the new OTN Director-General’s impressive career which included her service as Jamaica’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and concurrently as Ambassador Non-resident, to Portugal, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Spain.

Ambassador Mathurin served as a career Foreign Service Officer in the Jamaican Foreign Service from 1979. She has undertaken several key diplomatic assignments, including Permanent Representative to the United Nations and the specialised agencies in Geneva, and the World Trade Organisation where she was also co-ordinator of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group in the WTO Doha Round of Negotiations.

Other assignments included Senior Director and later Under Secretary in the Trade Division of the Foreign Ministry, and Ambassador in Charge of External Trade Negotiations. During those assignments, she participated in the region’s negotiations with the Dominican Republic, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the intra-regional negotiations related to the establishment of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy.

Ambassador Mathurin’s appointment as Director-General of the OTN came as the result of a decision taken by the CARICOM Heads of Government at its 30th Regular Meeting in Georgetown, Guyana. In March 2009, the Heads of Government had agreed to incorporate the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) into the CARICOM Secretariat as a Specialised Department and agreed to rename the CRNM, the OTN at their July 2009 Summit.

Secretary-General Carrington noted that the OTN was “committed to the fullest consultations with Member States” in the preparation of regional positions of trade negotiations with third states.

Ambassador Mathurin’s stated that the OTN has also prioritised, as part of its external trade agenda for the Region, an advocacy for the completion of the DOHA Round of Negotiations.

In addition, she said that her office was working closely with the Implementation Unit of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), to ensure that arrangements were in place for the execution of the EPA, which CARICOM signed with the European Community (EC) in October 2008.

Of priority to the OTN also, Ambassador Mathurin said, was the involvement of the private sector and non-state actors, in preparations for external trade negotiations. She stated that the OTN had in train outreach programmes to augment these sectors’ involvement in the regions’ trade and development agenda.

Secretary-General Carrington stated that he was confident of the capacity of the OTN to undertake its task and fulfil its mandate under the leadership of the “extremely experienced and competent Director-General”, along with the “experienced technical staff”.

The OTN retains offices in Barbados and Jamaica, with officers based in Brussels, Belgium; Geneva, Switzerland; Canada; Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.

Edwin Carrington, CARICOM Secretary General

The campaign under the theme “1.5 °C to Stay Alive”, was launched on Monday and intends to support and “dramatize a common regional approach for mitigating the effects of climate change on the Region, which it will articulate at Copenhagen as well as at the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference, November 27-29, 2009, Trinidad and Tobago” the secretariat says .

According to CARICOM, the plan includes a digital display on the harmful effects of rising greenhouse gases on the small island states and several video presentations on the how climate change is affecting human, animal and plant life in the Caribbean .

CARICOM Secretary-General Edwin Carrington said the common regional approach for mitigation of climate change to avoid “its unmanageable consequences” was based on studies by the CARICOM Climate Change Centre.

He noted that these concluded that global average temperatures that exceeded 1.5 degrees centigrade would have devastating effects on the Region including significant destruction of coral reefs, coastal barriers, and marine ecosystems, as well as excessive flooding and more intense hurricanes.

“It will erode much of the foundation of our tourism, our agriculture and our fisheries industry; it will wreak havoc on our plant-life, our forests and most of all dislocate our people. Immediate corrective action must therefore be taken if we are to avoid this widespread destruction,” Carrington said.

Meanwhile, Carrington noted that the recent MOU between Guyana and Norway on a low carbon development programme, which provided incentives to Guyana for the preservation of its forest, was a “significant signal to the rest of the world of the type of collaboration between developed and developing countries that could make a difference.”

Brazil’s commitment to a low density emissions programme by 2020, was also praised by Carrington who noted that “It is only with this type of solidarity that CARICOM can carry a strong and unyielding shared vision that could make Copenhagen a landmark for reversing the ill effects of Climate Change. The future generation deserves no less; to delay is to gamble with the very future of mankind.”

He stated that the Region would seek to consolidate its position within the Alliance of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the Group of 77 and China, as well as with the Developed or Annex 1 Countries.

Speakers featured at the opening session were David Thompson, Prime Minister of Barbados and CARICOM Head of Government with portfolio of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), Cuthbert Joseph of Trinidad and Tobago, Edwin Carrington, CARICOM Secretary-General, Michael de la Bastide, President of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Professor Nigel Harris, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies UWI), and Prof Winston Anderson, Executive Director of the Caribbean Law Institute Centre. The Symposium was organized by CLIC, the CARICOM Secretariat and the CCJ with funding from the Ninth European Development Fund Caribbean Integration Support Programme.

Among the topics discussed over the three-day event were `Caribbean Integration and Trade: Hot Button Issues’; `The Caribbean Legal System – Co-existence, Conflict or Convergence’; and `Capitalism and Governance: The Regulation of Competition within the Community’.

The final day saw discussion by a panel comprising former Prime Minister Owen Arthur of Barbados, Kenny Anthony former Prime Minister and current Opposition Leader of Saint Lucia, and Justice Duke Pollard of the CCJ. The panel discussion was chaired by Sir Shridath Ramphal, former Commonwealth Secretary-General.

The panelists, who addressed the topic `Reflections, Progress and Challenges’, all concurred on moving ahead with the regional flagship programme.

Owen Arthur highlighted what he described as a pressing need to build confidence in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) by making it matter more to the Region’s greatest resource; its people. Arthur made a stirring plea for the continued pursuit of the CSME as it was originally conceived. The CARICOM Single Market was established in 2006 and the Single Economy is scheduled to come on stream in 2015.

Warning that there would be no “quick fixes”, Arthur said the Region must move forward with a clarity of purpose and firmness of political commitment and proceed in areas where there could be “an early harvest”. He described the CSME as the most imposing single endeavour ever contemplated by the Caribbean.

“It was never going to be easy,” the former Prime Minister acknowledged, adding that the impact and effects of the CSME were intended to be transformational. Not enough had been done, he lamented, to move the CSME as a legal entity to a lived entity.

Former Prime Minister Anthony acknowledged the positive steps taken within the context of the CSME that should serve to provide the Community with a sense of what is possible. For example, he saw an emerging sense of confidence about the intention of the CCJ with the Community beginning to see the Court as shaping the jurisprudence of the Region.

The positive steps such as the skilled certificate regime and travel arrangements indicated the promise and potential of what Heads of Government had envisioned, Anthony said.

The Symposium is planned as an annual forum for discussion of current or controversial developments in the law relating to or affecting the CARICOM and its Member States.

Juhel Browne jbrowne@trinidadexpress.com

THREE ISSUES: Victor Hart, chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute.

Trinidad and Tobago has slipped by seven rankings in the Transparency Institute’s 2009 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) to a rank of 79 out of 180 countries.

And Victor Hart, the chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute (TTTI) which is the local chapter of TI, said yesterday this was ’likely’ the result of the combination of three main issues that have grabbed the national spotlight, including the Commission of Enquiry into the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UDeCOTT) chaired by British QC Prof John Uff.

TTTI has conducted a survey that was answered anonymously by local contractors to determine the level of corruption in the construction sector which it plans to submit to the Enquiry which is scheduled to resume public hearings early next month in which some claimed they lost millions of dollars due to corruption in their industry.

’That enquiry has publicly aired many allegations of serious corruption in public procurement. Secondly, for over nine months the country has been without an Integrity Commission that has caused public disquiet and the perception may have been gained that, in the absence of a functioning Integrity Commission, white collar crime could be practised with impunity by persons in public life,’ Hart said.

He was speaking at a news conference on the 2009 CPI at the Development Finance Ltd (DFL) building on Cipriani Boulevard, Port of Spain, where he said the third issue that likely had a negative impact on this country’s ranking on the index was ’the collapse of the CL Financial Group of Companies that led to the billion-dollar financial bailout by Government (which) has led to allegations of greed and boardroom mismanagement.’

Trinidad and Tobago slipped down the CPI’s rankings even though it maintained the same 3.6 per cent out of 10 score that it had last year because other countries increased their rankings.

Nearby Barbados, for example, is now ranked 20th on the index as opposed to being 22nd last year.

’So that even as Trinidad and Tobago prides itself by claiming to be the economic and political leaders of Caricom, we are far from being the leaders as far as the perception of corruption is concerned,’ Hart said.

TTTI is calling for the implementation of several measures to address the issue, including appropriate legislation for political party funding, the appointment of a new Integrity Commission and the enactment of legislation to protect whistle blowers. (Trinidad Express)

The Employers’ Consultative Association of Trinidad and Tobago (ECA) has openly condemned the call for next Monday and Tuesday for workers to ’stay at home’.

The call came from The People’s Democracy, which is a newly-formed joint body comprising several local trade unions and non-governmental organisations.

The ECA has said,’While we understand the need to urgently address some of the social issues underlying the call for a shutdown, we do not believe that the two-day shutdown is the answer.’

The umbrella organisation, which usually speaks as a collective voice on employer-related issues, is now telling employers they should resist any demand or threat made by workers or their representatives for time off with pay on the proposed ’stay-at-home’ days, November 23 and 24.

The ECA, which is now chaired by Ruben McSween, has said employers should know they are not obliged to pay workers ’for time not spent in the performance of their jobs’. (Trinidad Express)

South Bureau

A warrant was issued yesterday for the arrest of an Opposition Member of Parliament because of his failure to appear in court on a traffic offence.

The name of the politician was called repeatedly in the Chaguanas Third Magistrates’ Court before Magistrate Margaret Alert made the order.

Upon the arrest, the MP will be granted $15,000 bail, she ruled.

Multiple attempts to reach the politician by cell phone failed last night.

The warrant stemmed from a September 9, 2009 incident on the Uriah Butler Highway near Chaguanas, when the politician was stopped and cited for improper overtaking.

The ticket gives the driver the option of paying a fine at the nearest court within 14 days or appearing in court to challenge the ticket on a specified date.

If the driver does not appear on that day, a summons is often issued, giving the driver another court date.

Failure to show up on that date often results in a more severe order-an arrest warrant.

The ticket issued to the politician is more than eight weeks old. (Trinidad Express)

Ria Taitt Political Editor

Faced with strong opposition to the draconian measures contained in the Tobacco Control Bill, Government yesterday relaxed some of the prohibitions and rolled back some of the harsher penalties.

Health Minister Jerry Narace in winding up in debate in the Senate yesterday said he was backing down with regret and that it bothered him to have to concede on some of the points.

He said the domestic worker was being put at risk as the children in the homes, in conceding that home could not be defined as a workplace, except where it is used for the purpose of ’manufacture, distribution and trade’ of tobacco products.

He said the amendments came in the interest of getting the legislation passed.

Government also removed the ban on sale of single cigarettes which would be affected small vendors and the low income smoker.

It also slashed the penalties-for a number of offences-prohibition on sales by minors, on public displays of tobacco products and on the sales of tobacco products in certain places.

The penalty for these offences, on summary conviction, was reduced from a fine of $100,000 to $50,000 for the first offence; from $200,000 to $100,000 for the second offence and $300,000 to $100,000 and imprisonment for nine months for the third offence.

Upon conviction on indictment (in the High Court), the fine has been reduced from $500,000 and $200,000 and imprisonment of one year.

However, Government proceeded with the legislation and its basic offences despite the complaints of Independent Senators.

Attorney General John Jeremie in defending the legislation, said there were ’very powerful interests at work’ in the tobacco industry.

Referring to this lobby as the ’tobacco complex’, he said years before the Tobacco Amendment bill came to Parliament, there were interest groups preparing to oppose it.

’This complex is as powerful as the complex which drives the war machines in certain parts of the world,’ he said, adding that he was not saying this lightly.

Jeremie, who taught at the University of the West Indies, said one of his students ended up in a tobacco company.

’And her primary purpose-and this was a directive given to her by her superiors-was to monitor and track what was going on in terms of domestic legislative activity … and she wanted to know what was going on in terms of anti-tobacco legislation,’ he said, adding that she knew he was Attorney General.

Independent Senator Gail Merhair noted that while the consent age for sex was 16, the age for smoking was 18.

’Is Government saying it is okay to have consensual sex, but not to smoke?’ she asked.

Merhair, who noted that her office is situated next to a Montessori school and behind the El Socorro taxi stand, wanted to know how the clause which forbids smoking within 15 metres of a school would be enforced.

Noting that many times persons waiting for a taxi smoked right in front of her driveway, she asked whether she would be liable as defined in Clause 12 (3) which states that the manager or owner or lessess of the place where the contravention takes place who ’authorised or acquiesced in the act’, was personally liable. She also stated that she was against imprisonment as a penalty.

Her colleague Basharat Ali, noting the ban on self-service displays and on public displays, said whereas condoms were at one time the ’under the counter item’, this would now be tobacco products.

He said Government should not deprive old people in homes of the right to smoke ’in the last years’.

’Are you trying to save their lives?’ he asked.

He added that the same relaxation of any ban should apply to Death Row prisoners as is done in other jurisdictions.

Members of the Senate were up to press time still in committee stage trying to have the bill passed. (Trinidad Express)