Editorial

Fri, Oct 1, 2010 When New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate Burton Williams made his now infamous “pastor pickney” statement on Saturday, September...

Tue, Sept 28, 2010 Yesterday, Monday September 27, 2010, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College officially welcomed over 900 new full ti...

Heads of State and Government from all over the world wrapped up their special Summit on the Millenium Development Goals at the United Nations Headqua...

Tue, Sept 21, 2010 Of late, the Ministry of Education has adopted an attitude to the media that is inadvisable. There seems to be the feeling in the t...

Fri, Sept 17, 2010 The first ever Adult and Continuing Education Week was held in St. Vincent and the Grenadines from September 4 to 9. The activities...

Tue, Sept 14, 2010 It is with more than a tinge of sadness that we have heard the news of the imminent departure of Ambassador Olga Chamero Trias, rep...

Fri, Sept 3, 2010 Pity the people of Pakistan! As if having two-thirds of your country devastated by floods, causing billions of damage to land and pr...

Tue, Aug 31, 2010 Last weekend’s SEARCHLIGHT was filled with stories of the successes of our young people in the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC...

Fri, Aug 27, 2010 The country moved one step closer to the much-anticipated general elections, which must be held by March next year, with the disclos...

Tue, Aug 24, 2010 Yesterday, during the morning show on the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) radio, the following was broadcast during the weat...

Fri, Aug 20, 2010 Public concern over the failure by the Police to act on the lawful instructions of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is moun...

Tue, Aug 17, 2010 St Vincent and the Grenadines will always be a poor country. This is a fact we might as well accept. The plural nature of our tiny c...

Fri, Aug 13, 2010 Quite a lot has been written and spoken about the importance of food and food security. The pity is that, in the Caribbean in partic...

Tue, Aug 10, 2010 The Girls’ High School is about one third way through the lecture series it is holding as part of its 100th anniversary celebratio...

Fri, Aug 6, 2010 On Tuesday, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves confirmed that government has decided not to renew the lease of the premises developed ...

Tue, Aug 3, 2010 Another Emancipation Day has passed in the Caribbean, marking the anniversary of the darkest period in our history. As has become cus...

Fri, Jul 30, 2010 The burden of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCD), especially heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, cancer and chronic ...

Tue, Jul 27, 2010 St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as a small, developing nation-state, has been pursuing a pragmatic foreign policy to maximize our ou...

Fri, Jul 23, 2010 This week saw both the Government and the Opposition revealing plans, they each say they have, to provide a laptop computer to each ...

Tue, Jul 20, 2010 The battle to determine who will be in charge of the ship of state, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, for the Parliamentary term 2011-...

Fri, Jul 16, 2010 Major disappointment has been expressed throughout the CARICOM region about the outcome of the annual mid-year Heads of Government S...

Tue, Jul 13, 2010 SEARCHLIGHT wishes to add our commendations to all those who were the recipients of honours and awards over the Carnival season. Wit...

Fri, Jul 09, 2010 Our Carnival is evolving, and whether the changes taking place are for the better or the worse, will be a topic which is debated for...

Fri, Jul 02, 2010 Last week Tuesday, 637 graduates from the four divisions of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Community College received their dipl...

Fri, Jun 11, 2010 Over the past two months or so there has been a new input into the usual debate in the public domain on political issues. This is in...

Fri, Jun 04, 2010 It is difficult for Caribbean people to work up enthusiasm for any further initiative, new or long-standing, on regional integration...

Fri, May 28, 2010 SEARCHLIGHT offers its heartiest congratulations to Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar on her appointment as Prime Minister of Trinidad and ...

Fri, May 21, 2010 Several weeks ago, a former government Minister in Jamaica gave a public warning of the possible influence of the drug trade on poli...

14.MAY.10 The centenary celebrations of the Girls’ High School were launched in fine style last weekend with a torch relay that passed through almos...

07.MAY.10 Over the last weekend and right up to early this week, news reports from around the world gave details of activities held to commemorate Int...

30.APR.10 Educators, parents and indeed the general public are expected to pay keen attention to an experiment which will begin in Trinidad and Tobago...

23.APR.10 LAST month it was announced that regional Heads of Government were to meet in Port of Spain in mid-April in a special Summit on crime in the...

16.APR.10 There has been huge public outcry about a recently held schools’ dance off and cheerleading competition. The outcry followed the broadcast...

09.APR.10 On Wednesday of this week Vincentians joined the rest of the world in observing World Health Day. The Ministry of Health and the Environment...

01.APR.10 Today’s world is filled with such tragedy. Stories abound, even here in little St. Vincent and the Grenadines, of persons who have lost al...

26.MAR.10 The governing Unity Labour Party (ULP) will this Sunday celebrate the 9th anniversary of its accession to office with the holding of a mass ...

19.MAR.10 This weekend, 250 Editors and Publishers who are members of the Inter American Press Association will meet in Aruba for its Mid-Year meeting...

12.MAR.10 IN our last issue, SEARCHLIGHT carried a story based on a recent World Bank study on the availability of nurses in the English-speaking Cari...

05.MAR.10 The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states “the will of the people shall be the basis of authority of the government”. Half, ...

26.FEB.10 The dry season is well and truly with us, and throughout the Caribbean the complaint is the same - scarcity or lack of water. The spreading ...

19.FEB.10 Last week the people of the world commemorated the 20th anniversary of one of the great moments of history, the release from 27 years of cap...

12.FEB.10 Nine years ago, one of the key issues in the elections of 2001 was that of economic citizenship. The debate around this added to the volatil...

05.FEB.10 IT SEEMS the time has come for Government to effect the provisions made in the Education Act of 2008 for Truancy Officers to be hired. With ...

This must have been the most difficult Budget that Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has ever had to present to Parliament. H...

22.Jan.10 Just as the Old Year closed with the political implications of the November referendum competing for attention with the Christmas celebratio...

15.Jan.10 If the devastation which has hit the people of Haiti does not touch the social consciences of the people of the world, then nothing else wil...

08.Jan.10 THE TRAGIC vehicular accident on the new Argyle by-pass road raises for the umpteenth time questions about the enforcement of regulations fo...

30.DEC.09 December 31, 2009 not only marks the end of yet another year, it also signals the end of one of the most momentous decades in human history....

23.DEC.09 The entire nation reacted with outrage last week when word spread that burglars had broken into the local Salvation Army headquarters and ha...

18.DEC.09 The recently released Barbados and OECS Corporate Performance and Outlook report has confirmed what we have all suspected. The majority of b...

11.DEC.09 Some anniversaries pass relatively unnoticed, shorn of the hype and attention given to others. This is particularly so of events with which ...

04.DEC.09 IT WAS MOST refreshing to hear Prime Minister Gonsalves, at his Press Conference on Monday of this week, take up the cause of Climate Change...

27.NOV.09 The people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines have spoken, decisively so. In the first ever referendum to be staged in this country, the prop...

20.NOV.09 On Wednesday of next week, the voters of St. Vincent and the Grenadines will have their first experience in dealing with a referendum, a pop...

13.NOV.09 November 25, the date of the national referendum on the Constitution Bill 2009, is approaching, and the political landscape of St. Vincent a...

St. Vincent and the Grenadines has entered its 31st year as an independent nation with the first major issue on the national agenda being that of cons...

30.OCT.09 The news broke before there was an official announcement. By virtue of our local “grapevine”, talk show hosts were already speaking of a...

23.OCT.09 When St. Vincent and the Grenadines celebrates its 60th anniversary of Independence in the year 2039, how will the actions and attitudes of ...

16.OCT.09 To all our Vincentian sisters and brothers returning home for our 30th anniversary of Independence, we say a hearty “WELCOME”. Whether t...

09.OCT.09 Caribbean countries can beam with pride at much of the results of the recently-released Human Development Report of the United Nations Devel...

02.OCT.09 A major task lies ahead for those of us who are charged with the responsibility of educating our people leading up to the national referendu...

25.SEP.09 We have heard it all before - in the fifties, sixties and seventies - “We are not ready”(for independence, then). It was a song not just...

18.SEP.09 The national debate on the proposed new Constitution for St. Vincent and the Grenadines took another turn this week with the formal launchin...

11.SEP.09 Another twist in the drama surrounding the events of October 1983 in neighbouring Grenada occurred last weekend with the freeing of the rema...

04.SEPT.09 It is a real pity that after all the hard work of the last six years to prepare our people for a mature role in the historic task of shapin...

28.AUG.09 When a young man, barely twenty years old, speaks casually of a foreign hit man being hired to kill him and another claims he was shot at th...

21.AUG.09 We are almost three weeks into Emancipation month, although you would scarcely know it based on the paucity of related activities happening ...

14.AUG.09 St. Vincent and the Grenadines must be a strange place indeed, if we are to judge by the attitude of its people. For umpteen years we have l...

07.AUG.09 The launch of the $5.8 million Sustainable Agriculture Livelihood Project last week by the Government of St.Vincent and the Grenadines repre...

31.JULY.09 With school examinations out of the way and Carnival a fading memory, the long vacation is now in full swing. Pupils and students of all ag...

24.JULY.09 The contents of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Poverty Assessment Report, the subject of a National Consultation last week, make very in...

17.JULY.09 “Well, it can hardly get worse, can it?” That was the rhetorical question asked by one regional commentator in the midst of the debacle...

10.JULY.09 There is a lot about our Carnival of which we can be justly proud. VINCY MAS 2009, the self-proclaimed “Hottest Carnival in the Caribbean...

03.JULY.09 For us in the newspaper business, this is our busy season, not just because of Carnival, but because of the many graduation ceremonies we a...

26.JUNE.09 In the midst of growing resentment among many persons in our society about what is being viewed as the excessive use of force by some branc...

19.JUNE.09 Swine flu was upgraded last week by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to a global flu pandemic, the first in 41 years. Cases have been re...

12.JUNE.09 The Carnival season is with us again. Over the next two months, the people of the Eastern Caribbean will stage five full-fledged sets of Ca...

05.JUNE.09 Operation Vincy Pac is now over. Now what? Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves reported to the nation earlier this week that the operation, w...

29.MAY.09 Another chapter in the political and constitutional development of St. Vincent and the Grenadines was written this week with the presentatio...

22.MAY.09 The 2009 hurricane season in the Caribbean is 10 days away from its commencement, but Vincentian Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has crea...

15.MAY.09 Since assuming office in 2001, the Ralph Gonsalves-led ULP administration has pursued a bold and innovative foreign policy. While maintainin...

08.MAY.09 We can bury our heads in the sand as much as we want, the problem will not go away. We can blame the media, saying the outcry is of their ma...

30.APR.09 The National Labour Congress of St. Vincent and the Grenadines has at last undertaken the responsibility of reclaiming ownership of activiti...

24.APR.09 Was the Fifth Summit of the Americas, which concluded in Port of Spain last Sunday, a resounding success? Did the Caribbean gain anything su...