The future of Jamaica may depend upon recovering precisely this discipline. Not more information. Not more commentary. Not more amplification. Better discernment of signals. The question is whether we possess the wisdom, courage, and discipline to recognise them. And having recognised them, whether we possess the character to act.

Jamaica, meanwhile, continues to behave as though literacy is solely the responsibility of classroom teachers. The evidence suggests otherwise. The irony is that the country already possesses a potentially transformative workforce. It is called the Jamaica Library Service...Read More

In simple language, Titchfield repeatedly did more with less. Its success was not explained by elite intake. It was explained by educational effectiveness. The school transformed students. That kind of reality should have profoundly influenced educational policy discussions. Instead, another trend was quietly gathering momentum. Across Portland and beyond, a growing proportion of students began identifying themselves not as science students but as “business students.

Schools’ Challenge Quiz may continue to entertain, inspire and emotionally unite Jamaicans for many years to come. But unless the country develops the courage to distinguish educational spectacle from educational substance, SCQ will remain what it has quietly become: An elaborate national performance of academic prestige by pretence.

Why is it that whenever high office is implicated, the machinery of justice slows to a cautious, glacial crawl? Why does constitutional scrutiny lose its existential urgency precisely where public trust most desperately requires it? The pattern has become predictably formulaic....Read More

We continue tolerating what can only be described as rag-tag educational reporting cultures. In some schools, grades appear inflated without meaningful standardisation. In others, records remain partially paper-based and vulnerable to deterioration, disappearance, manipulation, or prolonged delay. Elsewhere, transcript preparation depends excessively upon the diligence or competence of a single administrator. That is unacceptable in 2026. Worse still, the absence of integra

In the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, the island has entered a period of accelerated reconstruction, heightened executive urgency, and concentrated state power. Many welcome decisive leadership during a crisis; societies battered by disaster naturally crave efficiency and visible authority. Yet, history warns that national emergencies are fertile ground for institutional distortion and the quiet normalisation of political centralisation. Within this context, uncomfortable s

I must be getting old. Not only because I remember when a prime minister’s financial declaration was treated as a pro forma exercise in trust, but because I now watch Jamaica drift toward a template of governance that South Africans have already lived—and are still trying to escape. The comparison sounds provocative. Can the leader of a Caribbean island of three million be placed alongside the man who presided over Africa’s most industrialised economy? ...Read More Online

Then-Security Minister Dudley Thompson (PNP) famously opined that "no angels died at Green Bay." He further claimed that the absence of recovered firearms from the deceased was due to the "superior firepower" of the military’s "electric guns," which supposedly shot the gangsters' weapons from their grasp, propelling them into deep waters over 50 metres away. I found this narrative mathematically and mechanically absurd. My consultations with ballistics experts & colleagues a

what becomes of civic engagement when truth itself is strained in the nation’s highest forum? Espeut speaks to a troubling contempt for the Jamaican people. Gyles urges deeper, more meaningful civic participation beyond performative gestures and political patronage. Both are right. But there is a prior condition—one that must underpin both respect and engagement. It is accuracy. It is truth. For only the second time in my longish life, I feel compelled to state that a m

Orwell’s genius lay in depicting authoritarianism not as a thunderclap, but as a gradual erosion—commandments on the barn wall altered nightly, Squealer the pig gaslighting the animals with sophistries. NaRRA’s architecture bears uncanny parallels. Its procurement shortcuts, while necessary for speed, could prioritise velocity over rigour. Ministerial timelines for oversight might compress scrutiny into tokenism...

The Jamaican landscape is often described in the binary of “hardware” and “software”. We excel at the hardware, the construction of highways, the expansion of hotel room counts, hospital building, and the drafting of complex legislative frameworks. Yet, as we survey the current state of Jamaica’s Cabinet, it is increasingly evident that our national progress is being throttled by a glitch in the “software”: the moral and corrective reflexes that should govern public life....R

There are moments in the life of a small state when the earth itself seems to whisper temptation. Jamaica may now be approaching one. Somewhere beneath our marine estate, beyond the reach of casual sight but not of determined exploration, there may lie oil—commercially meaningful oil. Enough, perhaps, to alter our balance sheets, to excite investors, to animate Cabinet briefings, and to awaken that most dangerous of national instincts: the belief that salvation has finally

by Dennis A. Minott, PhD.

There are moments in the life of a people—and of a world—when language itself begins to falter. Words we once trusted feel lighter than they should. Titles we once respected begin to echo without substance. April 2026 is such a moment. As the “War of Whimsy, Lust, and Criminal Impulse” involving Israel and the United States against Iran unfolds, we are compelled—whether we welcome it or not—to examine not only the conduct of great powers, but the moral posture of smaller s

A salvaged control board from his late grandfather’s discarded prosthetic device. Basic sensors repurposed. A casing assembled from available materials. Hours of trial, error, and recalibration. The result, still rough but functional, is a portable defibrillator powered through a hybrid system—bioelectric input supplemented by stored charge. It responds to voice prompts. More importantly, it contains a simple but critical safeguard: it analyses cardiac rhythm and will only d

In the altered theatre of 2026 geopolitics, where Donald Trump’s second act is no longer conjecture but wars of impulse, an ancient question presses itself upon us with renewed urgency: can a leader, swollen with self-attributed glory, descend into a form of madness akin to that of King Nebuchadnezzar—until reason is restored not by counsel, but by consequence? The book of Daniel offers no ambiguity...

In every functioning state, certain responsibilities stand above partisan manoeuvre or diplomatic fashion. Among them, none is more fundamental than the protection of the population’s health. A government may disagree about taxation, infrastructure, or foreign alliances, but the continuity of medical care for its citizens is a sacred obligation. When that continuity is placed at risk by political calculation, the issue ceases to be administrative. It becomes a question

Why was there no trial run of direct deposits, a solution floated during negotiations in July, October, and December 2025? While Cuba reportedly left some of those overtures unanswered, one must ask: where was the legislative tweak or the updated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to bridge the gap? Jamaica has the capacity to make such arrangements work for essential services. Instead, the government chose to wash its hands of the matter, leaving 277 specialists high and dry

Is it an exaggeration to call this an “epidemic”? I think not. If we look at the hallmarks of depression—anhedonia (loss of interest), fatigue, and a sense of hopelessness—and map them onto our national productivity figures, the correlation is staggering. We are a nation in a state of prolonged, untreated grief and systemic burnout. By pretending we are a “chilled” people, we ignore the high-cortisol reality of Jamaican life. We have one of the highest murder rates per capi