“A disservice to the Caribbean, indeed”

By Alissa Trotz

The title of this week’s column borrows from an editorial in the Jamaica Observer (April 18), which targeted those involved in what it described as “an orchestrated campaign against the recent Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).” The commentary expressed outrage that this ‘Caribbean’ issue had been aired on the international stage via an article and websites, in a move “calculated to embarrass the political leadership of the region.” It reserved its harshest comments for those ‘wise men’ who attended an EPA forum in South Africa, wondering whether resources from cash-strapped universities had been wasted to finance such disloyalty, even suggesting that the move was purely self-serving, intended to “catapult forgotten or obscure intellectuals into the glare of media coverage”……