Dominica - country.
Publié le 04/05/2013
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Other crops are being promoted to diversify the economy away from reliance on bananas.
They include coffee, cacao, mangoes, citrus fruit, and root vegetables.
Pumice is quarried and exported on Dominica.
Manufacturing is on a small scale and largely limited to the processing of farm products.
The main manufactured goodsare fruit juices, alcoholic beverages, soap, and essential oils.
The island also has electronic assembly plants, data-processing companies, and garment manufacturers.
The government promotes Dominica’s “nature island” image to attract tourists.
Beaches are few, but the island’s wildlife and natural beauty bring ecotourists.
Increasingnumbers of visitors come for the rain forest, birding, hiking, scuba diving, and whale watching.
The currency is the East Caribbean dollar (2.70 East Caribbean dollars equal U.S.$1; 2006 average).
V GOVERNMENT
Dominica is governed by a president, prime minister, and cabinet, who are responsible to the country’s legislature, the House of Assembly.
The president is the head ofstate, a largely ceremonial role, and the prime minister, as the head of government, is in charge of governing.
The president is elected by the House of Assembly for aterm of five years and may not serve more than two terms.
The president is obliged to choose the head of the majority party in the House of Assembly as primeminister.
Elections must be held at least once every five years, but the prime minister may call elections at any time.
There are 30 members of the House of Assembly, 21 elected representatives and 9 appointed senators.
The senators are usually nominated by the president, five onthe advice of the prime minister and four on the advice of the leader of the opposition.
However, the senators can also be elected, according to Dominica’s constitution.Every Dominican citizen over age 18 is entitled to vote.
VI HISTORY
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Arawak and Carib people inhabited Dominica.
The Arawak, a peaceful people who lived in agricultural communities, were nearlyeliminated by the Europeans, chiefly as a result of disease and enslavement.
The more warlike Carib resisted the European settlers, and many more of them survived.
A A Contested Colony
Dominica was sighted and named by Christopher Columbus on November 3, 1493.
The island was soon contested by Spain, France, England, and the Caribs.
In 1547the king of Spain gave permission to the inhabitants of Puerto Rico to enslave the Caribs.
By 1633 the French held part of Dominica, but in 1640 the Caribs pillagedevery village on the island.
For more than a century afterward the European powers gave up their attempts at settling Dominica.
In 1748 the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle reserved Dominica for the sole benefit of the Caribs, but French traders, with Caribs as their allies, began to establish small tradingstations and plantations using African slaves on the leeward coast.
Then the Caribs attacked the French and were repulsed, and the British attacked the French underpretense of protecting the Caribs.
Britain gained control of the island under the Treaty of Paris in 1763.
The British divided Dominica into blocks and gave a reservation in one block of poor land to theCaribs.
The other blocks were sold in London, but purchasers could not assume ownership because Caribs fought them, with the aid of runaway slaves.
In 1778 the French successfully invaded Dominica while the British were fighting the American Revolutionary War.
The Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the war,returned the island to British control.
The French were unable to reconquer it despite attempts at invasion in 1795 and 1805.
England abolished slavery in 1834, andDominica subsequently became the only British Caribbean colony in the 19th century to elect a black majority to its legislature.
The local government’s policies,however, hurt the interests of the British landowners who successfully lobbied the British government in 1865 to replace the legislature with an assembly dominated byappointed members.
Under British rule, Dominica became part of the Leeward Islands dependency in 1833 and was attached to the Windward Islands group in 1940.
In 1967 it became aninternally self-governing state associated with Britain.
B Independence
Dominica attained full independence on November 3, 1978, and subsequently joined the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations.
The republic’s first primeminister was Patrick R.
John of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP).
This party had led Dominica to independence, but its government was not popular and was forced toresign in 1979.
Also that year a severe hurricane struck the island nation, causing widespread damage.
In 1980 the Dominica Freedom Party (DFP) and its leader, Mary Eugenia Charles, won a decisive victory.
Charles, the first woman prime minister in the Caribbean,remained in office for 15 years and led the DFP to election victories in 1985 and 1990.
During her terms in office she distributed land to small farmers and spurreddiversification of the economy.
She resisted several coup attempts, cooperated closely with the United States on policies such as the invasion of Grenada in 1983, andsought closer economic and political ties with Dominica’s island neighbors.
Charles retired in 1995.
C Recent Events
The United Workers’ Party (UWP), formed in 1988, won the 1995 elections, and its leader, Edison James, became prime minister.
The James administration stated itscommitment to a proposal that Dominica and three other Windward Islands form a political and economic union.
But hurricane damage and trouble in the bananaindustry weakened support for the UWP.
Following elections in 2000 the DLP and the DFP formed a governing coalition.
Roosevelt “Rosie” Douglas of the DLP became prime minister.
His stated aims were todiversify the country’s economy further and to gain an associate membership in the EU for Dominica.
But Douglas died after several months in office.
Pierre Charles,minister for communications and works, succeeded Douglas.
In 2004 Charles died and was replaced by Roosevelt Skerrit, the 31-year-old minister of education.
Skerritfaced the challenge of improving Dominica’s struggling economy.
Skerrit and his party won the 2005 elections.
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