Commentary

Richard Byles isn’t the obvious choice to head a central bank. Increasingly, across the world, those jobs go to academic economists with PhDs. Neither would too many people have assumed him to be the Holness administration’s first choice for the...

If ignorance was a natural resource, then Jamaica’s economic future would have a strong guarantee of prosperity. How can one possibly be charged for an act that the accuser or State does not even know what it is? If the law is an ass, then those...

On back-to-back Thursdays, June 6 and June 13, the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) staged a two-part Economics Seminar series, ‘Demystifying Inflation’. Interestingly, the stellar panellists for the first seminar were men and the second were women. Based on...

There has never been a case in Jamaica where a sitting leader of a major political party was voted out of party leadership, or where a contender was able to unseat the leader of a major political party. The succession of leaders of the People’s...

If we judge William Shakespeare by the first act and scene of his play, Macbeth, he would have been a terrible baseball and cricket umpire, and an even worse football referee. After all, he wrote “ Fair is foul and foul is fair.” However, when...

The debate on abortion and the call for the repeal of the Offences Against the Person Act (OAPA) have pivoted around themes of health, human rights and social justice. It is also important to examine the OAPA itself in terms of the historical,...

It was February 1993, and the call was from the widely admired Hugh Shearer. A general election had been called for the end of March and, in his safe (for the Jamaica Labour Party) South East Clarendon seat, he wanted to get some hard numbers on...

Last week Wednesday, a woman, after making purchases in a ‘candle shop’, was detained by a cop, who searched her bag and found ‘oils, magic spray and incense’, which she claimed were personal items, but which the cop concluded were obeah materials...

The fear with which large swathes of the People’s National Party (PNP) will probably face Peter Bunting’s challenge for the party’s leadership is likely to be exaggerated. The contest could, in the end, be good for the PNP, although the process is...

Besides the United Kingdom (UK/Britain), the United States of America (USA) is the oldest trading partner of the British West Indies (BWI)/Commonwealth Caribbean/Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries. The American territories, which would become...

Bob Marley was shot on December 3, 1976, because it was feared, in my opinion, that he was more and more openly supporting Michael Manley and the progressive attempts to rebuild the Jamaican society. Bob was shot roughly two weeks before the...

Not only the Government, but also opponents of the idea, have gone silent since the unveiling of the winning design for the new parliament building, which Prime Minister Andrew Holness wants to build at National Heroes Park, or the old Race Course...