Archive for December 21st, 2010
Thicker skin required
Now that we know that Brent Fuller won’t be getting any porridge with his Christmas Turkey this year, it’s perhaps an appropriate time to tell our local politicians that they need to stop being so sensitive when it comes to the press. For people who have chosen the most high profile profession outside premiership football and the movie industry, we in Cayman really do seem to have a bunch of sissies sitting in the LA.
During this latest debacle the foolishness of the attack on Fuller in the Legislative Assembly was compounded by the hours and hours of handwringing and ridiculous lamenting that day of the evils of the press.
They banged on (when they should have been passing and amending important legislation to get the country’s economy back on track) about how we never write the good news, how we twist their words and misquote them and paint them in a terrible light (when, of course, they perceive themselves as paragons of virtue), how the press and these upstart journalists who come from who knows where show no respect, call them by their actual names, and fail to bow and scrape anywhere near enough.
Some managed to recall every slight or misrepresentation in the kind of detailed fashion one would normally only expect from a premiership footballer or a Hollywood starlet.
In a democratic country where the press is genuinely free it is not there to big up politicians and sell their policies for them. Politicians are supposed to implement policies and do things that impact people’s lives for the better and sell their policies through positive action. The voting public is not stupid; even if we chose to write those favourable headlines that politicians dream of, if the people are not feeling it they will not be fooled by propaganda. The press, by and large, reflects the mood of the people.
Politicians in a democracy have to earn the support of voters through good policies that work. However, even when they do they will not be supported by everyone and the job of a good politician is to persuade the greatest number of people that their policies are the best. They are supposed to believe in their policies and stand by them, so when they are criticised in the press, instead of hitting out at the journalists they should be defending their policy decisions or the comments they have made about them with gusto and determination.
We in the press are supposed to record those policy positions and draw attention to the criticisms of, or alternatives to, those policies. We are not here to assist any government – UDP, PPM or any other that may emerge in the future.
Politicians are supposed to be criticised and questioned, but they in turn are supposed to be tough enough to defend what they do and stand by their convictions. After all, they have chosen a profession in which they set themselves up for a fair amount of public attention.
Our elected representatives ask us to vote for them because they tell us they are smart enough to know what’s best for us all. Every time they go to the polls they tell us thatthey know what’s going wrong and how to put it right. For better or for worse, those who choose politics do so because they think they can do a better job than the ones that came before them, that they can take charge of the situation and lead the country to success.
One would imagine that it takes a certain amount of chutzpah, brazen nerve, guts, presumption and, lets face it, a little bit of arrogance to say to your fellow countrymen “Hey, vote for me! I’ll sort it.” Surely then, one would imagine these guys and Julianna (Oops! Sorry, the honourable deputy premier and minster for a lot of stuff …) would have a thicker skin.
This berating of the press and constant criticisms of the messenger isgetting to be a little tiresome. We are doing our job and they are doing theirs, for better or for worse, and we are all at the mercy of the people. If we as journalists are rubbish, people stop reading us and we get sacked. If politicians are rubbish, they don’t get voted in again. Simple really.
In tough economic times the politicians need to stop worrying about the headlines and focus on policies. The modern press provides a forum for the politicians to deliver their message, as well as a forum for the public to tell them what they think back, and the smarter politicians know it and use it wisely.
The concept of a real free press in the Cayman Islands is still relatively young and most journalists here are very gentle on the politicians by comparison to the press corps in the United States and the UK. Despite the relatively new phenomenon of bloggers, which may be taking a little more getting used to, the politicians really need to stop fretting about the criticisms, the headlines or the angle on a story and worry more about the economy, crime and jobs.
Getting people back to work and making them feel safe is what will get politicians re-elected, not favourable headlines.
FCC is set to regulate net access
(The New York Times): The Federal Communications Commission appears poised to pass a controversial set of rules that broadly create two classes of Internet access, one for fixed-line providers and the other for the wireless Net. The proposed rules of the online road would prevent fixed-line broadband providers like Comcast and Qwest from blocking access to sites and applications. The rules, however, would allow wireless companies more latitude in putting limits on access to services and applications. Before a vote set for Tuesday, two Democratic commissioners said Monday that they would back the rules proposed by the F.C.C. chairman, Julius Genachowski, which try to satisfy both sides in the protracted debate over so-called network neutrality. But analysts said the debate would soon resume in the courts, as challenges to the rules are expected in the months to come.
Conference heralds start of a new relationships
(CNS): Canada’s former Prime Minister, Joe Clark, presided over the inaugural Northern Caribbean Conference on Economic Development held last week at The Ritz-Carlton, and said that this meeting of minds was a start of a new relationship bringing the best people together to solve issues that affected all Northern Caribbean territories.“It has the potential to be a game changer,” he said. The conference examined the key issues impacting the region and was billed as a step towards a new era of co-operation in commerce, tourism, education, migration and crime.
Organised by the Jamaica National Building Society, the conference brought together some of the most senior members of government from the region, including Bruce Golding, the Prime Minister of Jamaica; Kenneth McClintock, Secretary of State of Puerto Rico; P.J. Patterson, former Prime Minister of Jamaica; Edmund Bartlett, Jamaica’s Tourism Minister, as well as Cayman’s own Premier, McKeeva Bush and other members of the Legislative Assembly.
Golding noted that too often countries in the region were so intent on attracting the region’s nearest richest market, i.e. the US that they failed to recognise the synergies that existed among them, and spoke about the “inherent risk of insularity”.
Instead, countries of the region (which included the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic) ought to be pooling their energies and working together to compete against the rest of the world.
“We need to make partnerships where they don’t exist and strengthen those where they do exist,” he said.
Calling for the countries of the region to collectively raise their voices when it came to regional issues, Golding spoke specifically about Jamaica’s hammering by the US on the flow of drugs from his country to the US. He said Jamaica was doing everything it could to stem the supply but not enough was done to reduce the demand. He talked about reengineering partnerships and equitable burden sharing to create a framework to get on top of the drugs issue.
Strengthening the regional tourism product was a theme that ran through the conference and Golding said that promoting a package of options for visitors to the Northern Caribbean would be a great enticement for holiday-makers seeking to blend and mix their vacations. “It would give them more bang for their buck,” he said.
In a similar vein, P.J. Patterson said that the Caribbean Sea was home to half the world’s cruise fleet and yacht traffic yet that had always been for the benefit of others.
“The Caribbean does not even own one cruise liner,” he lamented.
With the Northern Caribbean home to Spanish, French as well as English speaking countries, Patterson also called for the breaking down of what he termed “the linguistic divide”, calling for the education institutions of the region to ensure that all students were fluent in the languages of the region.
Edmund Bartlett, Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism said that the Caribbean needed to offer visitors much more than simply sun, sand and sea and look to the culture of the region as a lure. He said that opportunities arose within the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) markets for potential visitors to the region, but warned that as these were long haul markets the region would have to find innovative ways to entice them. Collective marketing, he said, was essential for the region to reach such markets.
Secretary of State for Puerto Rico, Kenneth McClintock, talked about connecting Northern Caribbean countries together to create a larger single market for energy, in particular sustainable energy. He spoke about the idea of making the Northern Caribbean the first self-sufficient energy region and said that Puerto Rico was already connected to neighbours the US Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic, and urged others to consider interconnectivity opportunities.
During a panel discussion on issues relating to immigration, climate change and regional economic policy, Dr Elizabeth Thomas-Hope, Professor of Geography and a researcher/publisher on Caribbean migration, said that small societies were afraid of immigration but that it provided opportunities and enhanced economic growth of the country.
“Immigration is very beneficial to the host country,” she confirmed, but added that the public’s view did not always agree.
Alluding to a popular Caribbean song, she said that the public oftenmoaned that immigrants “come to me party and want to take over”.
She said that migration was a major challenge in the region.
Reflections posts burglary footage on Facebook
(CNS): The owners of Reflections which has been burgled and robbed umpteen times have posted the footage of its latest break-in on Facebook and on Youtube. During the early hours of this morning burglars paid not one but two free Christmas shopping trips to the store after hours. Stealing a number of electrical items what appears to be different burglars broke into the store around 3:30 and around 5:20 on Monday morning. Police who confirmed thatthey are investigating the burglaries are asking anyone who has information to call DC McDonald at George Town CID on 949 4222 or Crime Stoppers tip-line 800 8477 (TIPS).