Commentary

A man examines sections of one of the rooftops at St Elizabeth Technical High School destroyed by Hurricane Melissa.
December 9, 2025

Ronald Thwaites | Choices have consequences

The Minister is right. Each local school board has the practical and legal responsibility to determine how and when to resume school after Melissa.The role of government is to harvest the most urgent…
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December 9, 2025

Orville Taylor | John Crows to the rescue

Sunday is a day of rest for them, because the popular Jamaican folk song reports; our turkey vultures, “John Crow, say him no wuk pon Sunday.” Her logic might sound as if sucked into the eye of…
Gleaner editorial writes: But the [NaRRA] bill has serious problems. While it gets the mission broadly right, it does not yet meet the criteria public bodies in Jamaica actually need to be successful.
December 9, 2025

Lloyd Barnett | Identification and status of the head of state

In the previous articles in this series, I expressed the opinion that at present it appears that Jamaica will change from a monarchical form of Constitution to a republican form but that the…
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December 9, 2025

Garth Rattray | What if Hurricane Melissa landed in Kingston?

Category 5 hurricane Melissa was described as “catastrophic” as it approached our shores, and then rapidly transformed from a tropical storm into a monstrous hurricane packing wind gusts of up to…
December 9, 2025

Greta Merrill | The world unites in the face of crisis

In these trying times for the environmental movement, it can sometimes feel impossible to find the (solar-powered) light. In September the International Day of Preservation of the Ozone Layer (or…
Annmarie Rose, owner of an auto parts store in Cave Valley, St Ann, cleaning her shop after Hurricane Melissa caused damage.
December 9, 2025

Editorial | Help MSMEs after Melissa

Each day reveals more of the damage left behind by Hurricane Melissa. The Category 5 hurricane battered Jamaica’s western parishes — St Elizabeth, Westmoreland, Hanover, St James, and parts of…
A JPS electricity pole on Nashville Avenue in Mandeville, Manchester, which snapped and fell during the passage of Hurricane Melissa.
December 9, 2025

Editorial | A subterranean grid

Andrew Holness has put the issue of subterranean power lines back on Jamaica’s agenda, but the matter, in the current circumstances, insists on a deeper, and more urgent, discussion than the prime…
Mangled remains of a house in Westmoreland destroyed by Hurricane Melissa.
December 9, 2025

Peter Espeut | Hope springs eternal

Two days ago (last Wednesday) my wife and I accompanied a few friends on a journey to the isolated community of Seaford Town in deep rural Westmoreland on a mission of mercy. Hurricane Melissa made…
President Donald Trump addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
December 9, 2025

Ronald Sanders | ‘Sovereignty’ – A plaything of the powerful?

For the powerful, sovereignty is a sword; for the small, it must remain a shield Sovereignty is supposedly the cornerstone of international order: the formal declaration that every state has the…