
“It was recently brought to my attention that the final report of the Constitutional Reform Commission (CRC) was released, without official approval, via a local website and has entered the public domain. The report has since been removed from the website.
These events are unfortunate because they potentially undermine the important work the Commission has been doing on behalf of all Saint Lucians, to make recommendations for the reform of our Constitution. In particular, such a leak robs the Commission of the chance to constructively guide the initial debate that will now take place, on all of the various recommendations it has made.
I believe it is past time that the Final Report of the Commission should be formally presented to Parliament as required by the Statutory Instrument that established it in 2004. I am aware that, under the distinguished leadership of its Chair, retired Justice Susie D’Auvergne, the Commission completed its Final Report at the end of March 2011, after five years of diligent work.
It is now well over three months since the Commission’s report was completed. To date, a special meeting or ceremony of the House of Assembly is yet to be convened to present the report to Parliament. It would seem that, despite the best efforts of members of the Commission, it has been impossible to agree a date for presentation of the report to Parliament.
The seeming refusal or lack of enthusiasm to place priority on setting a date to receive the report, demonstrates scant regard for the work of the Commission and for its Chair in particular. It also demonstrates scant regard for the people of Saint Lucia who anxiously await the results of the Commission’s deliberations over these many months.
When the Constitutional Reform Commission was established, it was with the understanding that the Commission would consult widely with Saint Lucians both at home and abroad. I believe that the Commission has conscientiously discharged this duty and the people of Saint Lucia, having participated enthusiastically in these consultations, deserve to know what the Commission finally recommends. It is also opportune, with an election looming, to examine the recommendations by the Commission and consider their implications for good governance in our country.
I therefore call on the Prime Minister to make a firm commitment to the Commission so that the report can be presented to all members of Parliament as well as the Governor General as soon as possible and I wish to assure the Saint Lucian public, that the opposition stands ready to agree a convenient date for submission of the report at the earliest.”

Major news sources are reporting that Brtish singer Amy Winehouse is dead at the age of 27. The BBC states that the singer was found dead in her north London flat and the cause of death is yet to be explained.
Amy is an award winning singer and is most famous for her song Rehab on the album Back to Black.
The Guardian is reporting that the Metropolitan police said: “Police were called by London ambulance service to an address in Camden Square shortly before 16.05hrs today, Saturday 23 July, following reports of a woman found deceased. On arrival officers found the body of a 27-year-old female who was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Winehouse is also well known for her struggles with drug and alcohol abuse. She famously vacationed in Saint Lucia in 2008 and 2009 and performed at the St Lucia Jazz Festival in May 2009 where she was booed by the audience and did not finish her set.
The singer brought a lot of international attention to the island but there was debate that she was being exploited.

Jacques Egyptien Compton was born in Saint Lucia on July 25th 1927 but was educated in Europe where he read Literature and studied Journalism and Arts Administration. For several years he worked in Europe as a free-lance Writer, Lecturer and Broadcaster. His lectures on Caribbean History and Literature and Culture were delivered at Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education as well as at Secondary Schools in the United Kingdom, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, as well as the Caribbean.
In the United Kingdom he founded his own cultural group (Music, Dance and Drama), and put on theatrical performances in several parts of the world. He was also an Impresario in the United Kingdom, offering a platform for many West Indian and African performing artistes.
He has been actor on stage, television and film, musician and singer.
He has written two full-length folk ballets, ’Erzulie Doudou’ based on the life of Erzulie, the goddess of Love and Beauty in Haitian folk mythology and ‘The Chosen One’ based on the Shango, the religion of the Yoruba people of Eastern Nigeria, but as practiced in Trinidad and Tobago.
During the lifetime of Radio Antilles he contributed a weekly programme to that station on Educational and Cultural affairs from the United Kingdom.
From 1977 to 1979 he was Manager of Radio Saint Lucia, his island’s national radio station, and he introduced several new programmes, including Radio Plays by Caribbean and African playwrights, Short Stories on Wednesday mornings, Book at Bedtime in the evenings, ’Youth Talk’ in which primary and secondary school children participated and were taught Radio Journalism and introduced to Radio Broadcasting, News in French Creole, a weekly programme entitled ‘Voix Sainte Lucie,’ and ‘Commentary.’ a week-end programme on Radio. He was relieved of that post when there was a change of Government in 1979. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1979 and joined the Civil Service as an Arts Officer with offices based in Wembley in the London Borough of Brent, Middlesex.
In 1985 he returned to Saint Lucia to take up the appointment of Director of Culture with the Government of Saint Lucia and in that capacity represented the Government of Saint Lucia at several International and Commonwealth Cultural Festivals as well as Commonwealth and International Conferences in Europe, the Far East, Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1986 he persuaded the government of Saint Lucia to participate at a Caribbean Festival in the United Kingdom and took to that festival, two plays,
‘Banjoman’ by Roderick Walcott and Derek Walcott’s ‘Ti-Jean And His Brothers’ which were well received. It was the first time that a play by Roddy Walcott, twin brother of Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott, was seen outside the Caribbean.
In May 1988 he presented a Proposal to the French Government for the establishment of a theatrical facility and in February 1989, the Cultural Centre was handed over at a very impressive ceremony, the occasion coinciding with the 10th anniversary of Saint Lucia’s Independence and the bi-centenary of the French Revolution. At the time of the French Revolution Saint Lucia was French and was the first country outside France to have embraced the ideals of the French Revolution, for which Revolutionary France nicknamed Saint Lucia ‘Sainte Lucie la Fidele’ (Saint Lucia the Faithful).
In 1997 there was again a change of Government and he was relieved of the post of
Jacques receiving an award from St Lucia's UWI Open Campus in recognition of his work in Arts and Culture.
Director of Culture.
In January 1982 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and in June 1990, the Government of the Republic of France appointed him a Chevalier De L’Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres. In January 2008 the Open Campus of the University of the West Indies, Saint Lucia, presented him with an Award in recognition of his contributions to Culture and the Arts in Saint Lucia.
In recent years, he had worked full time at his writing, contributing articles, book and theatre reviews to the local newspapers and had presented a weekly television programme entitled ‘Commentary’ specializing in educational and cultural matters.
He has had short stories published in the United Kingdom and in the Caribbean and has completed the manuscripts of five novels: ‘The Orphan,’ ‘A Troubled Dream,’ ‘Crossroads At Grande Riviere,’ ‘Nanette,’ and ‘In The Prison Of A Life,’ four novellas and a scholarly work on the Caribbean entitled ‘The West Indians–Portrait of A People.’
Three other recently completed manuscripts are entitled ‘Culture and Society in Saint Lucia,’ ‘The Shroud of Night—The Treatment of the Negro in Modern Literature in English’ and ‘Five Saint Lucian Novelists and Their Novels.’ A book of Essays soon to be completed is entitled ‘Narrative And Dialogue In The Paintings Of Dunstan St. Omer – Essays on Art and Literature.’
Three of his books, the novel, ‘A Troubled Dream’ and a textbook on Theatre Arts, entitled ‘An Introduction To Theatre Arts,’ for students taking that subject for the CXC and a scholarly work entitled ‘The West Indians—Portrait of a People,’ were published by Hansib publishers in England in 2008. A fourth, a short work entitled ‘Community Arts and Cultural Identity in the West Indies—Saint Lucia, A Case Study’ has also been completed but not yet published.
Jacques Compton died on July 18th in St. Lucia. A tribute event organized by the Cultural Development Foundation will be held on Monday July 25th at the Cultural Centre at 7 pm. A funeral service will be held at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at 2pm on Tuesday July 26th after which his body will be cremated.

Prime Minister Stephenson King has promised to resolve the Grynberg affair with or with out the assistance of opposition leader Dr. Kenny Anthony. In a highly anticipated national televised address on what was billed as issues of national importance the Prime Minister focused exclusively on the oil and gas exploration deal with Jack Grynberg’s RSM Production Company. The King administration says the contractual arrangements inked during the former Dr. Kenny
Anthony administration has landed the country in legal hot water.The Prime Minister indicated he was compelled to break his silence on the matter by incensed Saint Lucians at home and abroad. He says his administration is trying to determine whether the former regime contravened the minerals vesting act by granting an exploration license to the company without the authorization of the Governor General. The Prime Minister says his government is concerned about what he calls an anomaly in one of the agreements with RSM.
The King administration alleges the Dr. Kenny Anthony regime imperiled the island’s sea bed in an ill conceived contractual arrangement with Jack Grynberg. The Prime Minister claims extricating the island from the deal will be a costly and prolonged legal affair with a man who relishes boundary disputes and litigation. However the government is determined to resolve the legal entanglement.
The King administration is also investigating reports the billionaire may have farmed out the island’s seabed to a Chinese exploration company. The opposition Saint Lucia Labour Party dismissed the Prime Minister’s address as a pathetic display of nothingness. In a media release the opposition says the address was empty and lacked any substance whatsoever. SLP spokesperson Jadia Jean Pierre says the speech did not deliver answers on a slew of questions posed by the opposition like hurricane Tomas reconstruction and other pressing domestic matters.

Ricky T made a clean sweep of the soca competitions, winning the prestigious Road March title in the process while Minel from the South Calypso Tent created history by being the first female to win the Calypso Monarch title twice and Mas Action Carnival Band continued its domination by winning Band of Year.
The record breaking achievements were announced yesterday as the committee appointed to manage this year’s carnival prepares to wrap up the festival which from the beginning has had its fair share of issues, and which ended pretty much as it had begun, and as it has now come to be viewed – loaded with issues.
One such issue had to do with the staging area. John Joseph, Chairman of the Carnival Stakeholders Committee yesterday admitted that the location the stage was placed was not satisfactory. The stage was just about a foot high and placed on the asphalted surface of the John Compton Highway next to the Sabs Playing Field. The judges were placed just inside the fenced part of the field very close to the road.
According to Joseph the setting up of a stage, which has been absent in carnival for a number of years, was done on a trial basis.
“We need to review the entire scenario and see if we could establish a proper stage with proper viewing, proper camera angles and with enough space for spectators. This one was not satisfactory.” Joseph said.
With $1.1 million allocated to carnival 2011, which does not include prize monies, it was thought that the issues associated with carnival would have been eliminated. But even as the curtains came down on Carnival late Tuesday afternoon thousands of spectators were still furious about what they had to endure on Carnival Monday.
But light applause to the Carnival Stakeholders Committee for pulling carnival 2011 off after getting into the game a month or less. The committee managed to pull off all the shows on the carnival calendar, no mean feat when at one time the committee appeared to be causing more friction and putting out more fires than anticipated.
However that in no way suggests that the Cultural Development Foundation would not have pulled it off as well, if the Foundation was allowed to continue with its carnival programme for this year.
The rug being pulled from beneath the feet of the Foundation by the government, never mind the trumpeting call from members of the stakeholders committee that the committee is part of the Foundation and that in essence it’s the Foundation that was still running the show, should not be taken to imply inefficiency on the part of the Foundation. For the record it was not the Foundation that managed the festival, it was the Carnival Stakeholders Committee.
The committee did put in a lot of work in an attempt to give Saint Lucians a carnival with a difference, as was evident by the venues selected for some of the shows but it was the little things that the committee should have realized but did not, hence the reason why the type of difference sought by the committee turned out to be a really different one for thousands of people – bitter.
Spectators on carnival Monday were left to wilt in the hot sun waiting for the bands to come their way. With the judging taking place on the John Compton Highway next to the Sabs Playing Field, and with the bands taking an unusually long time on the makeshift stage which was placed flat on the asphalted surface of the road, the usual crowd waiting at the lower end of the John Compton Highway, on Jeremie Street and other parts of the city simply waited and waited, fuming, irate, and beside themselves from the long wait they were forced to endure before a band appeared.
Joseph yesterday noted that this was recognized by the committee but they were not in a position to solve that particular problem.
“It is a fact that people waited a long time. My understanding was that there were technical difficulties with one group that did not allow other groups to by-pass them. We do accept that that needs to be resolved and the most I could do is apologize to the public for that long delay,” Joseph said.
Not all the bands were judged on Carnival Monday, a result of the long delay.
The route the carnival bands had to march through was another issue this year which in effect caused the delay as well. Joseph explained that the length of the route had been an issue for quite some time and that is one of the major factors for the bottleneck in the city.
“I think the stakeholders have been saying that the city circuit has been too limited and as the bands grow will continue to be limited. Now is the time to extend the route again to allow better flow otherwise we will have the bottleneck as we get into the city and the carnival will have to stop as a result of the bottleneck. This has to be reviewed again. Until we clear the bottleneck it is not practical to go beyond the 6p.m deadline because you will not be able to circulate in the city,” Joseph said.
Regarding the venues used for the various shows this year the jury is still out however the committee has been receiving some good reviews.
Revelers, many of them, on Monday simply slipped away soon after being judged, while others moved away when they neared the Sans Soucie Bridge, after all jumping all the way from Choc to Vigie is no mean feat. Many felt there was no need to go all the way into the city.