June 9, 2023
A special thank you to US Vice President Kamala Harris for making the trip to The Bahamas this past week, offering assistance in many critical areas for the Caribbean. The region needed to hear good news from her.
She promised $100m to be spread around the region for various initiatives, from Haiti, to climate change to strengthening security. It is greatly appreciated it. It just depends now on how the leaders will spend the money.
No doubt, the lion’s share should go towards relief for Haiti. Just recently CARICOM announced that they have assembled a three man, gold star line up of former Caribbean leaders who will step in and provide administration for Haiti up until there are elections held for the beleaguered country.
We hope they are given the support from the rest of the Caribbean leaders, US and Canada, so they can do their work and help Haiti where they need it the most.
The first thing they have to do is get rid of Ariel Henry. He cannot and should not be allowed to stay during this period. He has clearly failed and any “assistance” from him should be anathema.
Secondly, stopping the flow of guns has little to do with money into infrastructure here. Though support investing in scanning and surveillance equipment for border patrol agents, from customs, to immigration officers and to defence and police forces, should help a little. We also don’t make guns in the region, but he US needs to have better controls on how guns flow freely from their country to the rest of us.
Fighting climate change, too, has little to do with us spending on anything in the region. We need the large countries like the US, China and Europe, to stop their pollution on every single front.