DEAR Mr. Prime Minister, lend me your ear. I’d like to speak solely to you in my first Sounding Off for the New Year. How do you feel when you look at the state of our island today? I mean how do you really feel? Before we go further, I’m not blaming you for any of it, you’re only fresh off the boat and what is going on now is the result of decades of hard work…or lack thereof, But I just want to know how the current state makes you feel.
SINCE his sudden and unexpected passing away on December 22 at the age of 70 (he would have been 71 …
SOONER rather than later, the “sleeping dragon” was expected to awaken from its slumber and take its place at the feasting table. In his book, The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria predicts the decline of the West and the Rise of the Rest. No doubt, Mr. Zakaria must have been thinking about China when he wrote: “Americans see that a new world is coming into being, but fear it is one being shaped in distant lands and by foreign people.”
I GREW-UP in the Faux-a-Chaud part of Hospital Road in Castries seeing Dwight Venner walking up and down the main road, to and from his family’s home, to town and from school (Saint Mary’s College). Much younger than him, I attended the Methodist Primary and RC (Roman Catholic) Boys schools in Castries — and knew more about his father than about the usually lone but friendly young ‘College Boy’ with all those thick school books.
ON January 1, “60 minutes”, an investigative programme aired by the US television company, CBS Corporation, ran a segment on “Citizenship by Investment Programmes” (CIP) that are operated by several countries around the world. For reasons best known to itself, “60 minutes” focused on three Caribbean islands after paying merely a passing glance at Malta, a Mediterranean island that is part of the 28-nation European Union (EU). It let pass other countries in Europe and North America that also operate such programmes.
Nearly twenty years ago Gypsy spoke to us eloquently of the growing scourges of drug addiction, prostitution, teenage pregnancy and the increasing incidence of the rape of women in his homeland, Trinidad & Tobago, and pointed to the reason for this. According to him that reason was: “Politics for one and politicians for the other.” Nobody listened, and today we know the result – those scourges now threaten to overwhelm Trinidadian society.
HE having been so significant a part of it, the world that knew Sir Dwight Venner could not but have stood still on hearing how suddenly the breath left his body. I was as saddened as anyone was bound to be, who had known him well, and for as long as fifty-five years.
I am a citizen of St. Lucia. Not particularly political or vocal or terribly savvy, but I do look around me and want to say: To the men and women who keep our streets, communities and roadways clean: thank you. It is a task looked down upon, but so vital to our health and well being as a nation.
ALL indications were that the UWP was against the Sunset Bay Resort Development in Sabwisha, Choiseul. Of course there is little that needs to be done to convince anyone that the hotel development was nothing but an election ploy. Only, the backfire seems to be in the faces of the people of Morne Sion, New Field, Fiette, Delcer and La Pointe. But again, my people like to complain in silence.
AS we’ve always done for all our lives, Saint Lucians on December 132016 celebrated yet another a dubious ‘National Day’ …
CHRISTMAS is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Throughout the years, many celebrations taken place for select occasions but mostly everyone enjoys this Christmas season. What is it that gives you that special Christmas feeling? People are lamenting that the time now goes by so quickly, and so there hardly seems time to enter into the true spirit of the season. Yet there is always the special element that really makes one feel that Christmas is here.
![Image of the protestors outside Parliament Building. [PHOTO: Stan Bishop]](https://thevoiceslu.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/The-protestors-outside-Parliament-Building-mid-600x400.jpg)
THE EDITOR: Having listened to Father Kevin Murray and Mrs. C. Wiltshire on television some evenings ago, I was taken …
The passing on of Chris Renwick remains a major loss to the business community and by extension to St. Lucia. I write today on my personal interaction over the last fifty years, based on the transportation of cement from both Trinidad and Colombia. Chris Renwick was recognised as the “cement king” of St. Lucia and single-handedly his organisation never failed St. Lucia in ensuring that cement as a valuable commodity was always available to consumers.
I wrote in a recent article that Saint Lucia may have to go through worse before it gets better. I think we are at the brinks of the worst with this Desert Star Holding proposed development. I am in no better favour of this DSH development as I am with this Sunset Bay Resort.
LAW abiding Lucians, stand up! I am sick of this crime scourge that is beginning to strangle our beautiful nation…the same way they strangled Rose Anne Raymond! When are we as a people going to stop being doormats? When are we as a collective going to stop with all the talk and actually take action?
After a lifetime in Caribbean and international politics, I thought the time had long since passed when I could be outraged by any event. But I was outraged last week and I continue to seethe over the fact that Pamela Ramsey Taylor, the director of a Clay County, West Virginia, non-profit who was removed from her post after she called Michelle Obama an “ape in heels” in a November Facebook post, will be re-instated in her job on December 23. What signal does this re-instatement send to Americans, black and white? Indeed, what statement does it make to the rest of the world?
AS the reality of the 2016 general elections manifests itself, a mood of renewed confidence appears to be noticeable as investors from outside the region capitalize on the renewed business approach offered by the new administration. The most significant and realistic investment to date is Desert Star Holdings (DSH) under the direct supervision of Mr. Teo Ah Khing, an individual with the most remarkable track record on a world scale.
IF you believe that economics and politics should be based on evidence, then you should think again. In today’s political times, it no longer matters whether or not something is true, but whether it is believed by the right people. Across supposedly information-rich and enlightened Western democracies, it appears popular trust in expert opinion and established institutions has tumbled. But is it possible to live in a world of data but no facts?
PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump is gambling that he can advance U.S. economic interests by cracking down on powerhouses like China for rigged trade practices, but he might be dealing with a tiny nation doing the same to the United States the first day he sits down in the Oval Office…
SOON it’ll be Christmas, and for some of us it will be a time of reflection on the birth of …