The ill-health of Venezuela’s president
The ill-health of Venezuela’s president
George Davis, guest columnist The energy minister, Phillip Paulwell, has taken a lot of stick from members of the advocacy group, Citizens United to Reduce Electricity (CURE), for the turn of events regarding the all-island licence granted to the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) by the People’s National Party (PNP) administration in 2001. The criticism, including the claim that the minister has betrayed the Jamaican consumer by supporting his Government‘s decision to appeal the ruling, is fully merited. The minister, whose popularity was in the early part of its growth phase at the time, effectively ‘called down crosses’ upon himself by hailing the July 30 Supreme Court ruling of Justice Bryan Sykes as a major decision in his own bid to bring competition to the energy sector. The lawyer for CURE, Hugh Wildman, is on record saying Minister Paulwell told him privately that the court ruling will allow him and his Government to break up the JPS monopoly on the transmission and distribution of electricity. With that admission, Paulwell effectively cut his own tamarind switch and asked CURE to flog him senseless after the reasons for the Government’s decision to join the JPS in appealing the ruling were articulated in the House of Representatives by Attorney General Patrick Atkinson on November 6. Gathering storm But the wrath at Paulwell’s impression of a ‘two-side cutlass’ is threatening to relegate the real issues, concerning the court ruling, to the sidelines. Principal among those real issues is the fact that in reality, the landmark victory secured by CURE in the Supreme Court would create an unprecedented crisis in every atom of the Jamaican society. If, as the court found, the JPS’s all-island licence was indeed invalid, and the decision should be enforced, what would happen to the company’s operations? At what point would the JPS turn off the lights, send its employees home, and call time on its business interest in Jamaica? What would Portia Simpson Miller, her Government and the citizenry do when JPS, with justification, demanded the return of the billions of dollars invested in its business, on the premise of being a monopoly, since 2001? How would Government deal with the fact that it now has to foot a massive bill for a licence that it granted to the utility provider to meet the country’s energy needs? For anyone in the dark about why the attorney general was moved to advise the Government to appeal the ruling, I ask only that you think very carefully on these things. We should agree that shutting down the sole transmitter and distributor of electricity won’t translate into lower light bills for us, the hard-up and long-suffering JPS customers. If such a ruling were handed down against a company similar to the JPS today in, say, England, where Wildman found a 1913 court ruling to strengthen his arguments in the court, I could understand and accept. No competition here But England today, with its 42 counties, has more than 70 companies which supply customers with electricity or a combination of electricity and gas. Shutting down one of so many providers simply allows the customer to call in npower or a Sainsbury’s Energy to supply their electricity needs. That, unfortunately, is not the reality in Jamaica. In all this, one must sympathise with the members of CURE. Theirs is, and continues to be, a gallant effort to do something about the crippling cost of our residential and commercial electricity bills. Hugh Wildman is a ‘square-shooting George Davis, guest columnist The energy minister, Phillip Paulwell, has taken a lot of stick from members of the advocacy group, Citizens United to Reduce Electricity (CURE), for the turn of events regarding the all-island licence granted to the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) by the People’s National Party (PNP) administration in 2001. The criticism, including the claim that the minister has betrayed the Jamaican consumer by supporting his Government‘s decision to appeal the ruling, is fully merited. The minister, whose popularity was in the early part of its growth phase at the time, effectively ‘called down crosses’ upon himself by hailing the July 30 Supreme Court ruling of Justice Bryan Sykes as a major decision in his own bid to bring competition to the energy sector. The lawyer for CURE, Hugh Wildman, is on record saying Minister Paulwell told him privately that the court ruling will allow him and his Government to break up the JPS monopoly on the transmission and distribution of electricity. With that admission, Paulwell effectively cut his own tamarind switch and asked CURE to flog him senseless after the reasons for the Government’s decision to join the JPS in appealing the ruling were articulated in the House of Representatives by Attorney General Patrick Atkinson on November 6. Gathering storm But the wrath at Paulwell’s impression of a ‘two-side cutlass’ is threatening to relegate the real issues, concerning the court ruling, to the sidelines. Principal among those real issues is the fact that in reality, the landmark victory secured by CURE in the Supreme Court would create an unprecedented crisis in every atom of the Jamaican society. If, as the court found, the JPS’s all-island licence was indeed invalid, and the decision should be enforced, what would happen to the company’s operations? At what point would the JPS turn off the lights, send its employees home, and call time on its business interest in Jamaica? What would Portia Simpson Miller, her Government and the citizenry do when JPS, with justification, demanded the return of the billions of dollars invested in its business, on the premise of being a monopoly, since 2001? How would Government deal with the fact that it now has to foot a massive bill for a licence that it granted to the utility provider to meet the country’s energy needs? For anyone in the dark about why the attorney general was moved to advise the Government to appeal the ruling, I ask only that you think very carefully on these things. We should agree that shutting down the sole transmitter and distributor of electricity won’t translate into lower light bills for us, the hard-up and long-suffering JPS customers. If such a ruling were handed down against a company similar to the JPS today in, say, England, where Wildman found a 1913 court ruling to strengthen his arguments in the court, I could understand and accept. No competition here But England today, with its 42 counties, has more than 70 companies which supply customers with electricity or a combination of electricity and gas. Shutting down one of so many providers simply allows the customer to call in npower or a Sainsbury’s Energy to supply their electricity needs. That, unfortunately, is not the reality in Jamaica. In all this, one must sympathise with the members of CURE. Theirs is, and continues to be, a gallant effort to do something about the crippling cost of our residential and commercial electricity bills. Hugh Wildman is a ‘square-shooting Jerome Reynolds, Gleaner Writer The Portia Simpson Miller-led Cabinet is today expected to discuss the government Jerome Reynolds, Gleaner Writer The Portia Simpson Miller-led Cabinet is today expected to discuss the government SOMETHING is drastically wrong with this country. We have been informed by the best of our scientific minds that close to half of us are mentally unstable and yet we have never considered that among that 50 per cent may be politicians. We seem to be people who mean well, but somehow don’t want to do well. In the time of the last administration, a lot of noise was made about transforming energy from expensive oil-burning to the interim stage of LNG. It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering, but it indicated that we were on the right track towards making our country more competitive in the region and giving our people a chance to make their lives more meaningful. As the talk of moving to liquid natural gas (LNG) gained momentum, so it seemed did the savvy of those who made up the last JLP administration. First, the Office of the Contractor General pushed its way to the front and the JLP Government wilted as the people rejoiced. As one listened to “the people” it must have seemed that there were many scallywags stalking the halls of JLP party central. An election was later held and the JLP was soundly rejected. Close to one year later, the only sound voice in the present PNP administration seems to be that of PNP minister, Phillip Paulwell. We have all accepted the fact that if we do not configure our energy-producing sector to move away from heavy oil-burning, we will remain in the backwoods forever. That we know. In the last JLP administration, one which made its name through making Jamaicans even more distrustful of politicians than they were before, once the matter of LNG arose, all eyes lit up! Too many people were making too much money, we thought. And even if we did have the full picture in our minds, it must have meant that we the people were being shafted. Or so we imagined. In the end, a weak JLP administration bowed to the dictates of political and public pressure and the entity that had won the concession for introducing LNG to Jamaica, Exmar, and its local connection were scuttled. The PNP rejoiced. With a PNP administration that is close to one year old and is generally suffering from “old-age” in so short a time, there have been a few areas which have attracted my attention, and it seems the attention of the general public, if word at street level still has any credence. I speak, of course, of the energy ministry. First, there have been the efforts in levelling the playing field in the mobile phone market. Somehow that seems to be on the reverse as one big telecoms player has been playing grand games with the public. Second, a convenient and totally indiscriminating public has bought the idea that that particular telecoms entity is deeply in love with them. That said, Minister Paulwell’s strident efforts to bring about a lowering of the energy bill to ALL in this country must be lauded. First, there was the thought among many that the LNG project was going to be government-driven and run by a historically proved inefficient government, especially one dominated by the PNP, an administration that has a history of being anti-business and too socialist-oriented. Second, as the world turns, and especially in Jamaica, corruption was the big bugbear. The present arrangement which takes the LNG supply project totally out of the hands of government, once it had reached the stage of deciding the directions of the energy policy of the country is, to me, the best compromise. It is not the perfect one, the one that I would have preferred – that of reverting to awarding the LNG bid to Exmar and its local partners. To me, however, Minister Paulwell has committed his ministry and government to the JPS lowering energy rates by 50 per cent by the year 2015, a time when the people of this country will still have the chance to make a decision on the direction of his government. Let us face it – there is not much that the Portia Simpson Miller administration can feed to the people as pap at this time. It won the 2011 elections on wild and reckless promises and mostly on the fact that it placed the populist PM Simpson Miller out front to play her song-and-dance routine to the people. Since the win, her song has died and her dance has failed to move us, but in the bleachers, the political watchers know that the Opposition JLP has a next-to-impossible chance of regaining all that was lost and given away by the abysmal and indecisive leadership of Bruce Golding. Seaga was dead right! The IMF analysis of economic trends for the next five to 10 years makes for bleak reading. Jamaica has lived most of its post-independence life as a mendicant nation where our prime ministers earn their kudos and clout at the polls for selling to the people their potential for borrowing the most. To a people of low-information voters and aggressive businessmen who are always seeing in such an arrangement an opportunity to make an extra buck, that simply feeds into the idea that government in this country must not be a facilitator as much as it ought to be a feeding tree. The people rely on this, especially whenever a PNP administration is in power, and big businesses know that as much as they hate to do business during a PNP administration, if they want to survive, the ball has to be kicked back and forth. Again, Seaga was right. In an administration filled with too many old socialists, Phillip Paulwell is a leading light in the effort to draw the PNP into the new 21st century. Finance Minister Peter Phillips has long shucked off his socialist leanings as the rigours of the current economic climate present themselves to him in a most unkind light. He has to face the harsh reality of an IMF programme in danger of being derailed by the historical politics of the PNP. The negotiations need the full cooperation of all inputs from the various ministries such as the energy and commerce ministries. We all know that the prime minister is out to lunch, so not much can be expected there more than a tip to the poor waitress, a hug and a kiss. Poor “she”. Keep doing your thing, Minister Paulwell. Who knows, maybe even the most inflexible leader can be brought fully into the 21st century.
SOMETHING is drastically wrong with this country. We have been informed by the best of our scientific minds that close to half of us are mentally unstable and yet we have never considered that among that 50 per cent may be politicians. We seem to be people who mean well, but somehow don’t want to do well. In the time of the last administration, a lot of noise was made about transforming energy from expensive oil-burning to the interim stage of LNG. It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering, but it indicated that we were on the right track towards making our country more competitive in the region and giving our people a chance to make their lives more meaningful. As the talk of moving to liquid natural gas (LNG) gained momentum, so it seemed did the savvy of those who made up the last JLP administration. First, the Office of the Contractor General pushed its way to the front and the JLP Government wilted as the people rejoiced. As one listened to “the people” it must have seemed that there were many scallywags stalking the halls of JLP party central. An election was later held and the JLP was soundly rejected. Close to one year later, the only sound voice in the present PNP administration seems to be that of PNP minister, Phillip Paulwell. We have all accepted the fact that if we do not configure our energy-producing sector to move away from heavy oil-burning, we will remain in the backwoods forever. That we know. In the last JLP administration, one which made its name through making Jamaicans even more distrustful of politicians than they were before, once the matter of LNG arose, all eyes lit up! Too many people were making too much money, we thought. And even if we did have the full picture in our minds, it must have meant that we the people were being shafted. Or so we imagined. In the end, a weak JLP administration bowed to the dictates of political and public pressure and the entity that had won the concession for introducing LNG to Jamaica, Exmar, and its local connection were scuttled. The PNP rejoiced. With a PNP administration that is close to one year old and is generally suffering from “old-age” in so short a time, there have been a few areas which have attracted my attention, and it seems the attention of the general public, if word at street level still has any credence. I speak, of course, of the energy ministry. First, there have been the efforts in levelling the playing field in the mobile phone market. Somehow that seems to be on the reverse as one big telecoms player has been playing grand games with the public. Second, a convenient and totally indiscriminating public has bought the idea that that particular telecoms entity is deeply in love with them. That said, Minister Paulwell’s strident efforts to bring about a lowering of the energy bill to ALL in this country must be lauded. First, there was the thought among many that the LNG project was going to be government-driven and run by a historically proved inefficient government, especially one dominated by the PNP, an administration that has a history of being anti-business and too socialist-oriented. Second, as the world turns, and especially in Jamaica, corruption was the big bugbear. The present arrangement which takes the LNG supply project totally out of the hands of government, once it had reached the stage of deciding the directions of the energy policy of the country is, to me, the best compromise. It is not the perfect one, the one that I would have preferred – that of reverting to awarding the LNG bid to Exmar and its local partners. To me, however, Minister Paulwell has committed his ministry and government to the JPS lowering energy rates by 50 per cent by the year 2015, a time when the people of this country will still have the chance to make a decision on the direction of his government. Let us face it – there is not much that the Portia Simpson Miller administration can feed to the people as pap at this time. It won the 2011 elections on wild and reckless promises and mostly on the fact that it placed the populist PM Simpson Miller out front to play her song-and-dance routine to the people. Since the win, her song has died and her dance has failed to move us, but in the bleachers, the political watchers know that the Opposition JLP has a next-to-impossible chance of regaining all that was lost and given away by the abysmal and indecisive leadership of Bruce Golding. Seaga was dead right! The IMF analysis of economic trends for the next five to 10 years makes for bleak reading. Jamaica has lived most of its post-independence life as a mendicant nation where our prime ministers earn their kudos and clout at the polls for selling to the people their potential for borrowing the most. To a people of low-information voters and aggressive businessmen who are always seeing in such an arrangement an opportunity to make an extra buck, that simply feeds into the idea that government in this country must not be a facilitator as much as it ought to be a feeding tree. The people rely on this, especially whenever a PNP administration is in power, and big businesses know that as much as they hate to do business during a PNP administration, if they want to survive, the ball has to be kicked back and forth. Again, Seaga was right. In an administration filled with too many old socialists, Phillip Paulwell is a leading light in the effort to draw the PNP into the new 21st century. Finance Minister Peter Phillips has long shucked off his socialist leanings as the rigours of the current economic climate present themselves to him in a most unkind light. He has to face the harsh reality of an IMF programme in danger of being derailed by the historical politics of the PNP. The negotiations need the full cooperation of all inputs from the various ministries such as the energy and commerce ministries. We all know that the prime minister is out to lunch, so not much can be expected there more than a tip to the poor waitress, a hug and a kiss. Poor “she”. Keep doing your thing, Minister Paulwell. Who knows, maybe even the most inflexible leader can be brought fully into the 21st century.
PARLIAMENT completed the task of breaking the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica‘s (PCJ) control of the exploitation and development of renewable energy resources on Friday. The Senate unanimously FOLLOWING THE revocation of an exploration licence, which was granted to Rainville Energy Corp, a subsidiary of Sagres Energy, to drill for oil, Energy Minister Phillip Paulwell has signalled that another company that was granted a licence could have it cancelled if they don’t begin drilling soon. The Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica yesterday said the failure of Rainville to meet its financial obligations has resulted in the revocation. Under the agreement, which dates back to 2006, Rainville should have secured the necessary funding for the second phase of the programme which began in May 2012. Among other things, this phase involved the drilling of an exploratory well by November 2013. Paulwell told
PAULWELL… leading light to draw the PNP into new 21st century
PAULWELL… leading light to draw the PNP into new 21st century