标签： Jamaica

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – The nine-member Caribbean Community (Caricom) Election Observation Mission (CEOM) has released its preliminary findings from The Bahamas’ recent general election, confirming that the Caribbean nation’s electorate was able to exercise their democratic right to vote in a calm, organized process earlier this week.

Deployed at the formal invitation of Dame Cynthia A Pratt, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, the observer mission brings together electoral specialists from nine Caricom member states: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname. Backed by technical and administrative support from the Caricom Secretariat, the mission launched its on-the-ground operations in The Bahamas on May 5, with activities set to wrap up officially this Friday.

In the lead-up to election day, the CEOM conducted extensive outreach across Bahamian society, holding consultations with a wide range of political, civil society, and community stakeholders to evaluate the state of pre-election preparations. On voting day itself, mission observers were distributed across the country’s two most populated islands – New Providence and Grand Bahama – where they tracked every stage of the electoral process, from the opening of polling stations and in-person voting protocols to the closure of polls and the final counting and tabulation of ballots.

Across their deployment, observers visited all five constituencies on Grand Bahama and 22 constituencies on New Providence, monitoring procedures at a total of 317 individual polling divisions. The mission’s preliminary report notes that the vast majority of polling locations received their election staff and required materials on schedule, allowing voting to begin promptly at 8:00 a.m. local time. Only a small number of stations faced minor start-up delays, the report adds.

CEOM observers also confirmed that a sufficient number of police personnel were deployed across all polling sites to maintain order, and that accredited party agents from every competing political party were present throughout the voting period to oversee proceedings. At nearly all stations, voters had ready access to full voter lists and dedicated information clerks trained to help electors locate their assigned polling divisions. Election workers were praised as courteous and well-trained, especially in their support for elderly and disabled voters seeking to cast ballots.

While the mission did document a small number of minor inconsistencies in the application of standardized electoral procedures across some sites, officials emphasized that these issues were isolated in scope and did not interfere with the overall flow or integrity of the voting process.

Voter turnout followed a predictable pattern throughout the day, the mission found, with steady streams of voters arriving during morning hours and in the period just before polls closed, while midday saw a lull in activity. The vast majority of polling stations closed on schedule at 6:00 p.m. local time, with a small number extending operating hours by a short margin to make up for earlier delayed openings.

Beyond voting, CEOM observers also monitored post-closing processes including the counting of ballots, sealing of used ballot boxes, and secure transfer of all electoral materials to designated holding facilities. The mission confirmed that ballot boxes were opened publicly and transparently in the presence of party agents, election officials, and observers, with preliminary results shared publicly in full compliance with established electoral rules.

In its formal interim statement, the CEOM said it was satisfied that the 2024 general election accurately reflected the will of the Bahamian people. “The polling day workers performed their duties professionally and must be commended,” the mission said, extending similar praise to police for their professional conduct and to Bahamian voters for turning out in an orderly fashion.

The mission also commended the Parliamentary Registration Department for its successful administration of the entire electoral process, and thanked the Bahamian public for upholding a peaceful environment across election day. A full final report, including detailed findings and targeted recommendations for future electoral improvements, will be submitted to the Caricom Secretary-General in the coming weeks.

During Tuesday’s Sectoral Debate on the 2026/27 national budget in Jamaica’s House of Representatives, Opposition trade, industry and global logistics spokesperson Anthony Hylland launched a pointed critique of the country’s decade-long economic trajectory, arguing that years of strict fiscal discipline have failed to deliver the structural transformation ordinary Jamaicans desperately need – a gap that hits low-income households the hardest.

Drawing on the core lesson of the popular business fable *Who Moved My Cheese?*, Hylton pressed the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration for clear action. “As we continue this Sectoral Debate on the 2026/27 Budget, I ask this Government a very simple question: You clearly see that the cheese has moved, so where is the strategy to find it?” he said.

In a measured assessment, Hylton did not dismiss the progress the country has made on macroeconomic stability over the past ten years. He acknowledged that substantial fiscal consolidation has delivered tangible results: debt-to-GDP ratios have fallen consistently, primary budget surpluses have been maintained, inflation control has improved, and the hard-won macroeconomic stability is a real achievement. “Both administrations deserve measured credit for maintaining that discipline because the sacrifices required to achieve it were significant and felt by the Jamaican people,” Hylton noted.

But he pushed back against framing stability as an end goal in itself. “Stability is not development. Stability is simply the foundation upon which development must be built. A stable foundation only matters if something transformative is eventually constructed upon it,” he added.

After a full decade of JLP leadership, Hylton argued, the deep structural change Jamaica’s economy requires has yet to materialize, with evidence of stagnation visible across multiple key sectors. Manufacturing’s contribution to national GDP has seen no meaningful expansion, value-added exports remain stuck at low growth levels, and the country is still overly reliant on the same core economic pillars – tourism, bauxite and remittances – that supported the economy a generation ago.

He also flagged growing risks to the once-promising business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, which was long billed as a engine for middle-class job growth and opportunity. Hylton said the sector has now hit a plateau, and faces an existential threat from rapid automation and artificial intelligence advancement – a major risk that the 2026/27 budget barely acknowledges. The government’s flagship logistics hub project, he added, remains more of an unfulfilled vision than a fully implemented initiative. Even the country’s long-term development blueprint, Vision 2030, has struggled to meet its targets: now past its midpoint, key structural goals have been quietly deferred, delayed or scrapped entirely, according to Hylton.

Turning directly to the new 2026/27 budget tabled by Finance Minister Fayval Williams, Hylton argued that the proposal is little more than a hurricane recovery package repackaged as a growth-focused budget. While the Opposition fully recognizes the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Melissa, which caused an estimated US$12.2 billion in damages – equal to nearly 57% of Jamaica’s total GDP – and destroyed countless lives and livelihoods, Hylton said the government has failed to outline any clear strategy for long-term transformative growth beyond emergency response.

“The Jamaican people deserve more than crisis management, they deserve a coherent plan for growth and national advancement. And the pressures facing ordinary Jamaicans continue to intensify,” he told the chamber.

Hylton highlighted the gap between the budget’s assumptions and on-the-ground realities for working people. When the budget was drafted, policymakers assumed oil prices would sit around US$60 per barrel, but current prices hover near US$100. That difference will not be absorbed by government ministers, he noted – it will be paid by the single mother filling up her gas tank, the small farmer running an irrigation pump, and the small domestic manufacturer seeing electricity costs eat into already thin profit margins.

“These are the realities confronting Jamaicans every day; realities that cannot be solved by macroeconomic talking points alone,” Hylton said.

The West St Andrew Member of Parliament concluded that the projected 1-2% GDP growth forecast in the wake of Hurricane Melissa is not evidence of transformation – it is merely survival. “Jamaica deserves more than endurance, it deserves direction. Discipline without direction ultimately becomes endurance without destination, and the Jamaican people have endured long enough without seeing the level of transformation their sacrifices were supposed to produce,” he said.

Jamaica’s main opposition party has launched a scathing attack on the current administration, accusing it of allowing the nation’s flagship public transit provider, the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), to fall into the worst crisis in its institutional history.

Speaking during the ongoing sectoral debate in Jamaica’s House of Representatives, opposition transport spokesperson Mikael Phillips drew a stark medical metaphor to describe the state-owned bus operator’s decline, saying the JUTC has spent a full decade lingering in the “accident and emergency department” amid ballooning financial losses and sustained government policy neglect. He called the current situation the “most pathetic state” the agency has faced since its founding.

Phillips pushed back against government claims of progress, pointing out that successive ruling party budgets have poured billions of dollars in public subsidies into the JUTC and greenlit the purchase of hundreds of new transit vehicles—yet the agency continues to drift deeper into systemic financial and operational failure. He derided the government’s half-hearted interventions, comparing them to “calling on a carpenter to examine a critical patient, when what is truly required is oxygen and a skilled physician to diagnose the ailment and prescribe the cure.”

The opposition spokesperson laid out grim financial figures to back his criticism, noting that cumulative losses for the JUTC have topped $100 billion over the past 10 years. This fiscal year alone, the agency is projected to post a staggering $14.8 billion deficit, and remains operational only through an emergency $11 billion government grant that keeps it afloat month to month.

Even with major capital investments in the fleet, Phillips argued, core performance metrics for the JUTC have failed to improve. He raised pointed questions about the agency’s soaring maintenance and fuel costs, particularly perplexing given that a large share of the updated fleet now runs on lower-cost compressed natural gas or electric power.

Beyond financial mismanagement, Phillips also criticized the current administration’s decision to expand JUTC routes into rural parts of the island. That expansion, he argued, has sparked unnecessary and escalating friction between the state-owned transit giant and smaller private transport providers that already serve those communities.

At its core, Phillips argued, the JUTC’s deepening crisis is a symptom of a larger failing: the complete absence of a coherent, long-term national public transportation policy from the current government. He issued a clear warning that continued delays to comprehensive structural reform will only further erode public transit access and reliability across the entire island of Jamaica.

HAVANA, Cuba – In a pointed rebuke of Washington’s latest policy toward the Caribbean island, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel publicly called on the United States Thursday to abandon its decades-long economic blockade of Cuba, arguing that lifting the restrictive trade measures would address the country’s deepening hardship far more effectively than the conditional aid package recently proposed by US authorities.