分类： politics

NEW YORK — For Jamaican-American politician Dale Holness, a third shot at Florida’s 20th Congressional District seat comes with a dramatically altered playing field: his two-time rival is mired in scandal, a partisan redistricting fight is roiling the state, and Holness enters the race with a clear fundraising advantage that has bolstered his long-held political ambition.

Holness, a former Broward County mayor and county commissioner who first entered politics after migrating from Jamaica as a 17-year-old, has fallen short of winning the Democratic nomination for the solidly blue district twice before. In his first 2021 special election bid, he lost to Haitian-American candidate Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick by just five votes — a margin so narrow it defied most political expectations. A rematch in 2022 ended the same way, even with the backing of the district’s roughly 25,000 Jamaican residents, a key voting bloc that has long supported Holness.

This cycle, however, the political landscape has shifted dramatically. Cherfilus-McCormick, who held the seat since 2022, resigned from Congress at the end of last month, mere minutes before the House Ethics Committee was set to vote on recommending her expulsion. The congresswoman faces felony fraud and ethics violations, centered on allegations that she diverted $5 million in erroneous COVID-19 relief grants awarded to her family’s health care company by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund her first successful congressional campaign. She has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing, but the scandal has gutted her political and financial standing.

Even though Cherfilus-McCormick has signaled she plans to run for re-election, her campaign is crippled by debt and a lack of funds. She drained nearly all her campaign reserves to pay criminal defense legal fees, leaving just $11,000 on hand — an amount widely considered negligible for a competitive congressional race. Her campaign committee also owes six-figure sums to multiple outside law firms, and her total fundraising haul this cycle is the lowest of the five candidates competing in the August Democratic primary.

With his longtime rival severely weakened, Holness now faces a new, more formidable challenge: a Republican-led redistricting effort that redraws the boundaries of Florida’s 20th Congressional District. The Florida state legislature approved the new map last Wednesday, which cuts Palm Beach County out of the district and adds the more Republican-leaning communities of Coral Springs, Margate, and Coconut Creek. Republican leaders hope the redistricting will flip the historically Democratic seat to their column, part of a broader national push by the party to gain multiple congressional seats across the country ahead of the November general election.

The redistricting plan is already on track to face legal pushback, however. Florida’s 2010 “Fair Districts” amendment to the state constitution prohibits partisan gerrymandering — the practice of drawing district lines to intentionally benefit one political party or weaken minority voting power. The fight in Florida is part of a larger national redistricting battle that has erupted this cycle: Republicans in Texas led a similar redraw backed by former President Donald Trump to pick up five additional seats, while Democrats have successfully pushed through redistricting reforms in California and Virginia that could net the party nine additional seats combined. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was designed to protect minority congressional representation, has also favored Republican map-drawing efforts in states like Louisiana.

Despite the uncertainty of the new district lines, Holness remains optimistic about his chances. He told reporters that 70 percent of the original 20th District’s territory remains intact under the new map, and the areas that remain are ones he has represented and worked in for decades. “These are areas that I know quite well, areas where I have worked with the people over many years and to whom I have been able to bring a better way of life as commissioner and mayor,” he said.

Holness also holds a substantial fundraising lead over all other primary candidates. His campaign reported raising more than $92,500 in the most recent quarter, leaving him with $312,672 in cash on hand after just $8,000 in expenditures. He credits his fundraising success to his long record of public service and his refusal to accept donations from political action committees, noting that most contributions come from ordinary working constituents in the district. Despite his strong position, he says he is not taking victory for granted, drawing on lessons from his two narrow past losses. “While I will acknowledge that I am in a fairly strong position, I also know that there is a lot more to be done,” he said. “I learned from past elections. I’m not hiring a whole bunch of high-paying consultants. I’ve been on the phone. Most of that money that I raised is from phone calls. I’m not spending money to make money.”

Still, headwinds remain. It is unclear how large the Jamaican-American voter base will be in the reconfigured district, and campaign organizers face the challenge of mobilizing voters to turn out for the August 18 primary, an election that many constituents may overlook ahead of the November general election.

Holness is building his campaign around core kitchen-table issues that resonate with working district residents, focused heavily on economic affordability. He has highlighted the soaring cost of living that has left many residents working two or three jobs just to make ends meet, criticized Florida’s decision not to expand Affordable Care Act Medicare subsidies that would lower health care costs for vulnerable residents, and pledged to address barriers to homeownership for young people and expand access to affordable childcare. “These are the issues to which I will devote my service if elected,” he said.

A seasoned public servant, Holness was born in Hanover, Jamaica in 1957 and migrated to the United States at 17. He attended Broward Community College and Nova Southeastern University, and has worked as a real estate broker for decades, leading the local firm All Broward Realty. He began his political career on the Lauderhill City Commission from 2004 to 2010, won a seat on the Broward County Commission in 2010 where he served until 2022, and made history as the first Jamaican-American to serve as mayor of Broward County from 2019 to 2020, leading the county through the chaotic initial days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the Jamaican government honored him with the title of Commander of the Order of Distinction for his outstanding service to the Jamaican diaspora.

Alongside Holness and the scandal-plagued Cherfilus-McCormick, three other Democratic candidates are competing for the party’s nomination: Luther Campbell, Elijah Manley, and Rudolph.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaican authorities have unveiled the second stage of the landmark GO Road Rehabilitation Programme, a $1.4 billion infrastructure investment designed to upgrade critical arterial routes spanning the Caribbean island. The announcement, shared via an official release from the Ministry of Works, outlines that the initiative will center on high-traffic road corridors that underpin public transit, cross-border and domestic commerce, emergency response access, the national tourism sector, and the everyday commute of Jamaican residents. This phase forms a core component of the government’s broader national infrastructure improvement strategy, which integrates immediate repair works with long-term rehabilitation projects already underway, including the national SPARK development initiative and the Accelerated Bridge Programme.

Robert Nesta Morgan, the minister tasked with overseeing public works, emphasized that the launch of the second phase is a direct response to widespread feedback from road users across the country. Motorists, daily commuters, public transport operators, local business associations, and community groups have repeatedly raised urgent concerns about the deteriorating condition of the island’s major road networks, prompting the government to accelerate this phase of works.

“We have listened closely to the calls from the Jamaican public. We recognize the deep frustration that poor road conditions have caused for regular road users, and we acknowledge that thousands of Jamaicans now struggle with arduous daily commutes because of the damaged state of many key thoroughfares,” Morgan stated in the official announcement. “This second phase of the GO Road Rehab Programme is built to deliver fast action on our highest-priority roads, rolling out tangible, meaningful upgrades exactly where they are needed most urgently.”

Morgan further explained that the island’s entire road network has faced unprecedented strain over recent months, driven by extended periods of extreme rainfall and the lasting damage left behind by Hurricane Melissa. Even as emergency repair and preliminary rehabilitation works have continued nonstop since the storm, many major corridors have continued to decline. Key issues include saturated road foundations that compromise structural integrity, clogged and damaged drainage systems that cannot handle heavy downpours,大面积 failed pavement sections, and widespread structural stress across infrastructure exposed to repeated severe weather events.

“Many of our roads already had underlying structural vulnerabilities before the hurricane hit, and Hurricane Melissa exacerbated and exposed these weaknesses for all to see. On top of that, much of the island has received well above average rainfall over the past six months, putting even more pressure on already compromised infrastructure,” Morgan added. “That is why the government is taking a layered approach, combining emergency spot repairs, targeted resurfacing, full drainage system upgrades, and large-scale full rehabilitation works across priority corridors.”

Under the scope of Phase Two, works will include precision patching of damaged pavement sections, full resurfacing of high-wear routes, targeted upgrades to drainage systems where flooding and water damage are recurring issues, and additional improvement works tailored to the findings of technical assessments carried out by the National Works Agency (NWA). Priority ranking for works will be based on three core metrics: total daily traffic volume, the severity of surface deterioration, and the route’s strategic importance to local communities and national economic activity.

The National Works Agency will take full charge of project implementation for the second phase, and has committed to publishing regular public updates as work schedules are confirmed and construction gets underway across different sites.

At the United Nations’ highest judicial body, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) based in The Hague, Guyana has launched a comprehensive argument challenging Venezuela’s territorial claim to the resource-rich Essequibo region, centering its case on centuries of administrative and historical evidence that contradicts Caracas’ assertions of ownership.

Spanning more than 61,600 square miles, Essequibo makes up roughly two-thirds of Guyana’s total land area. The region, which is teeming with untapped natural resources and extraordinary biodiversity, sits between the Essequibo River along its eastern edge and the Venezuela border to the west, making it one of the most contentious territorial disputes in the Western Hemisphere.

During the opening round of oral arguments before the ICJ panel, Guyana’s legal team and diplomatic representatives laid out a detailed historical record of the region’s occupation and governance. Ambassador Donnette Streete, who leads the Frontiers Division at Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Carl Greenidge, Guyana’s designated agent for the case focused on the 1899 Arbitral Tribunal Award’s legal validity, emphasized that neither Spain nor Venezuela ever established formal control over the territory. The first European settlers to occupy Essequibo, they argued, were Dutch colonists arriving at the turn of the 17th century.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the territory was subsequently populated by descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured Asian laborers brought to the region by Dutch and later British colonial rulers. Today, Streete told the court, Guyana exercises full, uninterrupted sovereign authority over Essequibo: the national government collects taxes there, provides public administration, elects nine members to Guyana’s national parliament from the region, and manages its ecologically valuable biodiverse landscapes.

Data from Guyana’s 2022 national census puts Essequibo’s current population at more than 313,000 people, accounting for over a third of the country’s total population. This population includes members of nine indigenous communities, who Streete confirmed are the original, long-standing inhabitants of the land.

Greenidge, a former Guyanese foreign minister, supplemented the historical narrative with tangible documentary evidence, including archival maps and place-name records. The maps, he explained, clearly place the farthest eastern Spanish outposts more than 650 kilometers outside Essequibo’s boundaries, while 35 existing settlements within the region still retain Dutch-origin names centuries after their founding.

Post-Columbian European settlement in what is now Guyana, Greenidge argued, begins definitively with the 1598 arrival of Dutch explorers. By 1616, the Dutch had formally established the Colony of Essequibo, built Fort Kykoveral along the Mazaruni River (west of the Essequibo River) as their colonial administrative seat, and extended settlement and formal governance westward all the way to the Orinoco River. In 1621, the Dutch West India Company took over formal administration of the colony, and the administrative seat was relocated to Fort Zealandia in 1744. “The Spanish, they were nowhere to be found, not east of the Orinoco, at any rate,” Greenidge told the court. “Their nearest outpost was San Tome on the banks of the Orinoco. This was the easternmost Spanish settlement. The Spanish governor there was candid about his predicament. The settlement, he wrote, was so far distant from other Spanish positions.”

Beyond historical evidence, Guyana’s legal team built a robust case based on established international judicial precedent. Pierre d’Argent, a globally recognized expert in public international law representing Guyana, referenced two previous ICJ rulings on the border dispute issued in 2020 and 2023. He noted that Venezuela has never formally challenged the legal principle of res judicata — the rule that final court rulings are binding on all parties — nor has Caracas filed a formal application for review under Article 61 of the ICJ Statute, the only legal pathway to contest this binding precedent.

“It must be concluded, therefore, that Venezuela has not discovered any new fact of such a nature had it been known as to be a decisive factor on the conclusions reached by the court in its judgments of 2020 and 2023 and in these conditions, these judgments remain res judicata for the parties in the court itself,” d’Argent told the panel.

Paul Reichler, another senior member of Guyana’s legal team, added that Venezuela itself accepted, respected and abided by the 1899 Arbitral Award for more than six decades after it was issued. Caracas did not formally challenge the award’s validity until February 1962, when Venezuela’s UN permanent representative sent a formal letter to the UN Secretary-General contesting the ruling. Even at that time, Reichler noted, Venezuela explicitly acknowledged that the 1897 bilateral treaty underlying the 1899 award remained legally binding. It was not until 1963 — 66 years after Venezuela ratified the 1897 treaty — that Caracas first began to question the treaty’s validity.

The ICJ is currently hearing the first round of oral arguments in the case, which is split into multiple three-hour sessions for each side. Both Guyana and Venezuela are presenting their full cases during this round, with proceedings set to continue through Friday and conclude next Monday.