In two days we will be singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and bidding farewell to 2016, a most remarkable year any way you look at it, and yet a year no one will be sorry to see end.
Some of the lows from 2015 were brought forward to this year, like the Zika outbreak, which was finally declared a “public health emergency of international concern” by the World Health Organisation in February. This was despite the fact that the disease and its related microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome had been plaguing South America, specifically Brazil, since 2015.
Still on the health scene, a Yellow Fever outbreak started in Angola in March and later in the year there were signs of it in other parts of the world bringing about a call for immunization and the presentation of evidence of such in some jurisdictions.
On the positive side, what was deemed the largest ever Ebola outbreak officially ended in June this year, having started in 2013. Over that period, it took more than 11,000 lives in Africa mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, as well as a few in the United States. This month, it was announced that a possible vaccine has been developed.
In September, the Americas was declared measles free. September also brought Hurricane Matthew, the strongest of the Atlantic’s 2016 season, which caused damage in the Bahamas, Jamaica and Cuba, but wreaked havoc in Haiti, already reeling from an outbreak of cholera. It did not help that Haiti had not yet fully recovered from 2010’s massive earthquake.
The year was halfway through when an ill-advised and divisive referendum in Britain portended that it would not end well. Fifty-two per cent of those who bothered to vote—said to be 72 per cent of the country’s 46 million registered voters—said yes to Britain exiting the European Union. The Brexit, as it was being called even before that event, sent Britain into a tailspin and cost then Prime Minister David Cameron his job.
Over in the United States, an equally divisive election campaign picked up its pace and in November, Donald Trump, the contentious reality television star and billionaire, who many had believed could never win, became the president-elect. Trump lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College by playing his cards right in America’s flawed voting system. The election result triggered a series of protests across the country by many who felt that Hillary Clinton, who would have been America’s first woman president, should have won.
In Europe, the migrant crisis deepened, with Hungary, Turkey and Poland refusing to take Syrians fleeing the civil war and Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia, which had previously allowed refugees passage from Greece to northern Europe, closing their borders. The year ended with thousands of people still in shelters and yet others fleeing to uncertainty.
Also on the international scene, in May, the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration better known as NASA announced the discovery of 1,284 new exoplanets. And in August, scientists also found an earth-like planet, raising a world of hopes and possibilities for the future.
Closer to home, US President Barack Obama finally visited Cuba in March, following the announcement of a détente with that country in December 2014. There have since been signs of liberalization in Cuba, including an influx of its citizens visiting Guyana to shop, buying quantities that point to resale on a small scale.
Venezuelans have also been coming to Guyana to shop as that country’s economic and political crises grew existentially, marked by rioting and looting.
In Brazil, then President Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from office in August and former president Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, along with other former top officials have been charged with corruption in an ongoing investigation that could also take down current President Michel Temer.
This year also saw the deaths of Cuba’s former President Fidel Castro as well as several other famous people including our very own E R Braithwaite, writer of To Sir With Love; ‘the Greatest’ Muhammad Ali; and singers Prince, David Bowie and George Michael, among several others.
These are by no means all of the events that earned 2016 its ‘hated year’ title, only some of the more impactful.
At home, Guyana’s year-old government shocked many with its laissez faire attitude to the drug bond scandal. And citizens are still reeling from the announcements, in December’s budget presentation, of new taxes set to take effect next year. Already, 2017 is shaping up as a year no one really wants to welcome.
