There is always much to write about Guyana. But whether there is anything this week beyond the regular news, good and bad, to interest the reader enough to spend fifteen minutes on a Sunday morning on an 800-word article, is doubtful. One exception is the election of Kamal Ramkarran as the new Bar Association President. I can write about this a whole lot, good and bad, and I can give a lot of advice but since I expect that it will only be politely ‘given consideration,’ I have to decline and seek out events overseas.
The first is the conviction of former President Donald Trump on 34 felony charges, the first time for a former US President. He can still run for President but cannot vote, even for himself. Trump is a man with unique traits, derived from a deeply narcissistic character, who came along at a time in US history when wages have been stagnant for fifty years, the gap between the rich and the poor have expanded exponentially and over 75 percent of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck. He has been able to successfully deploy his characteristics to subvert the leadership of the Republican Party and exploit the dissatisfaction of Americans to become a competitive candidate for President. The American pro-Democrat pundit class are at their wits end to figure out the reason or reasons for the Black, Brown, Hispanic and Youth vote becoming disaffected enough to have substantially lost interest in turning out to vote at all, or of voting for President Biden, despite the low unemployment figures and the significant reduction in inflation. Only a very few in the US, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, advocate that unless the vast capacity of the American capitalist system is deployed to rectify the imbalances against the working and middle classes and in favour of the rich, disaffection will continue.