Author: Opinion

Foreign Surveillance Powerhouses Are Penetrating the Caribbean, “ Region Is Dangerously Unprepared” 1. Introduction: A Region Facing New Digital Threats Across the Caribbean, quiet but consequential shifts are taking place in the realms of surveillance, digital identification, and law-enforcement technology. Governments across the region are grappling with persistently high rates of violent crime, ranging from 15 to 27 homicides per 100,000 people in countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, and The Bahamas, significantly above the global average of 6.1. These security pressures are compounded by limited forensic laboratories, outdated border-management systems, and chronic underinvestment in digital infrastructure. Against this…

The End of an Era On the day when Vincentians in the American Diaspora celebrated Thanksgiving, Vincentians at home served up deliverance from 24 years of PM Gonsalves’ suffocating rule, a deliverance that supporters and opponents of the New Democratic Party will long remembered. Only Gonsalves stood in the way of the NDP replicating its devastating 1989 triumph when it won all of the 15 seats in the House of Assembly. Yesterday’s humiliation constitutes an ignominious end to a man who offered so much promise only to flatter to deceive. Saboto Caesar and Camillo Gonsalves, who the aging prime minister…

My sisters and I grew up spending many nights in the back of my father’s Pajero. Funnily enough it was yellow. Speaker horns attached to the roof. He would travel to the various pastures and playing fields across the country and host sometimes one man meetings. Whole rallies could form around this Pajero but sometimes as I mentioned not many would show up. That said, even though at times they did not venture out to the playing field, they were in their homes listening, intently, to a young radical lawyer who would one day become leader. His message eventually took…

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has emerged as Taiwan’s loudest champion in the Caribbean, visiting Taipei a dozen times and publicly rebuking Beijing’s aggression. His speeches celebrate Taiwanese aid, democracy, and sovereignty. Yet, behind the fiery rhetoric lies a quieter, more calculated game: informal ties with mainland China, strategic meetings with Chinese envoys, and a willingness to engage Beijing economically while refusing to abandon Taipei. The result is a diplomatic two-step that balances loyalty, leverage, and political calculation. Since 1981, SVG has recognized Taiwan, and under Gonsalves, that bond has strengthened. Taiwanese loans and aid…

The African Union is demanding two permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council, a call the world can no longer ignore. But it raises a question the Caribbean has avoided for far too long. Why is no Caricom nation considered for permanent representation. Why is there still no black majority country seated at the table that decides war, peace and legitimacy. The stakes are rising. Tension between the United States and Venezuela is escalating, and once again the Caribbean is caught between giants. Washington expects alignment. Caracas expects sympathy. But the people who would face the economic and security…

A Nation at a Turning Point St. Vincent and the Grenadines stands on the brink of a rare moment in its history. After nearly twenty-five years under a government whose power was born of the “roadblock revolution,” the people are finally signaling that the long night of political banditry is at its nadir. For a quarter of a century, the Vincentian imagination was suffocated by gross mismanagement, unprecedented self-enrichment, and psychopathic behaviour in high office that plunged SVG over a cliff of three billion dollars national debt while, without conscience, is still asking the insulted and injured citizens of SVG…

Why My Political Journey Has Changed? For as long as I’ve known myself, my family was split down the middle: one side aligned with NDP, the other with ULP. One of my earliest political memories is standing at a street meeting as a child when Sir Vincent Beache handed me a Labour Party pin with the breadfruit leaf. In that moment I felt special. I felt seen, as if he had given me the world and I kept that pin close to my chest. He didn’t know what he had done to me. What he did was a good thing…

Still Grieving — And Still Asking Questions* For nine months, I have been wrestling with the loss of my father — and with the manner of his death. Death itself is inevitable; the circumstances surrounding it, however, are not. My father was admitted to the hospital on a Saturday night. He had a few known conditions — diabetes and hypertension — along with some additional issues that developed. I was later told that he was given medication that worsened his underlying kidney problems. Yet at the same time, I was being reassured that his kidney function was “okay.” What “okay”…

Founded in 1923, INTERPOL currently has 196 member states, making it the world’s second-largest international organization after the United Nations. INTERPOL is an essential platform for global law enforcement cooperation. It closely monitors transnational criminal activity including terrorism, cybercrime, and organized crime, and conducts exchanges with law enforcement agencies worldwide through its network of National Central Bureaus. INTERPOL’s mandate is to ensure and promote the widest possible mutual assistance between all criminal police authorities. Yet, for more than four decades, Taiwan has been unjustly excluded from the organization for political reasons. Taiwan’s law enforcement authorities have extensive experience and expertise…

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is approaching another election, yet instead of rising to the seriousness of the moment, our political culture has collapsed into a spectacle of noise, distraction, and emotional manipulation. What should be a period of national reflection has been reduced to a festival of hype, handouts, and showmanship. We have allowed politics to become entertainment, and in doing so, we cheapen our own future. Rallies now look more like street festivals than civic events. International artistes and extravagant stage productions overshadow the real purpose of elections. Performers with questionable morals and public figures with troubling reputations…

IT’S SAFE to assume that when citizens of a republic elected a new government in April 2025, they did not sign up for a masterclass in authoritarian puppetry. Yet, here we are. There are, however, many parallels between the crumbling democratic facades of our neighbors and the creeping rot in Trinidad and Tobago. We look at Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro with a mix of pity and horror a leader who dismantles opposition by silencing dissent. But if the latest missive from the Ministry of Homeland Security is to be believed, we are barreling towards that same reckoning. We do not want to…

Recent suggestions by members of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Bar Association that a Vincentian who acquires Canadian citizenship may remain eligible for the House of Assembly are constitutionally flawed. A careful reading of our Constitution makes clear that eligibility and disqualification are distinct concepts, and the act of acquiring foreign citizenship can trigger disqualification. Section 25(1)(a) establishes eligibility: a person must be a Commonwealth citizen of at least twenty-one years, resident in Saint Vincent, and capable of participating in parliamentary proceedings. This section permits a broad pool of candidates, including Commonwealth citizens. However, eligibility under Section 25 is…