IN THIS second week of 2014, it’s ironical that within the greater Caribbean region we are confronted with hopes by governments in two of the best known tourism-based economies – Jamaica and Barbados – anxious to assure citizens against new taxes while coping with agreed prescriptions from the International Monetary Fund.
Further, that two largely energy-based economies of our region, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela are now desperately engaged in combating the scourge of murders and robberies in a climate of awful spreading violence. Between May and December last year first Jamaica, and then Barbados, were compelled to enter into fiscal management arrangements to overcome mounting economic problems to sustain, partly, vital social sector services.
With the dawn of 2014, their respective Finance Ministers are, of this week, anxiously assuring their respective public against any introduction of “new taxes”, undoubtedly hoping to secure some breathing space in coping with multiple pressing social and economic challenges.
In contrast, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, long recognized as economies where oil has provided them special comparative advantages in responding to social and economic challenges, are currently experiencing a most critical period of gun-related murders and robberies.
Following the murder on Tuesday of Venezuela’s internationally famous beauty queen, actress and soap opera star, Monica Spear, and her Irish ex-husband, Thomas Berry, President Nicolas Maduro’s Minister of the Interior, Miguel Rodriguez, hastily summoned a special meeting of all governors of the 23 states as well as representatives of the 79 towns.
The purpose is to launch a nationwide plan to combat the epidemic of criminality, aware that Venezuela, for all its oil resources and economic investments, is currently burdened with the highest level of violence in many years.
Across in Trinidad and Tobago, deemed last month by the World Bank as “one of the wealthiest and well-developed nations in the Caribbean region”, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar was telling the media on Tuesday, following a National Security Council meeting, of the implementation of a plan to confront the horrors of spreading criminality that accounted for some 20 murders in the first seven days of 2014.
Perhaps anxious for the country to avoid acquiring the once notorious reputation of Jamaica in recent years as the so-called “murder capital” of the Caribbean region, the Prime Minister pledged to make “maximum use” of the combined resources of the police and army to stop an “evil and violent minority” from continuing to inflict harm, fear and tragedy on the lives of our citizens …”.
People, everywhere, who embrace the rule of law would, I believe, readily share the hopes of both the governments and citizens of Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago for success in their respective national campaigns to stop the wave of killings and robberies.
Even, that is, as they share the hopes of the finance ministers of Barbados (Chris Sinckler) and Jamaica (Peter Phillips) to achieve set objectives with their respective fiscal management programmes to at least avoid the introduction of “new taxes” during 2014 amid lingering apprehension about the future.
•? Rickey Singh is a noted Caribbean journalist. Email [email protected].
