Editorial

In 1849, the French critic, journalist and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr penned the adage “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” – “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.

Guest Editorial President Irfaan Ali’s recent comment embracing concerns over Guyana’s performance or underperformance at Mathematics based on the recently released results of this year’s CXC examinations and his call for an urgent probe into what he rightly appears to believe is the country’s decided math’s deficit comes against the backdrop of previously expressed concerns over what is now seen across the region as an obdurate crisis that refuses to go away with the passage of time. 

While no-one can reasonably gainsay the importance of the sugar industry to the country and its historic impetus in the development of Guyana, it doesn’t mean that citizens and watchdogs must turn a blind eye to what is transpiring and to write a blank cheque for unlimited expenditure.

At the beginning of this month President Irfaan Ali addressed the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association at the Umana Yana, saying that the foremost challenge in protecting parliamentary democracy was ensuring respect for free and fair elections.

Two weeks after the anti-narcotic authorities with the assistance of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) unearthed 4.4 tonnes of cocaine in bunkers at Matthews Ridge there has been virtual silence on who might have been responsible and what is to be done to root out such operations.

For a small country Guyana has produced a remarkable number of eminent scholars who have made valuable contributions in a variety of fields, but of these only Shridath ‘Sonny’ Ramphal who died on August 30 had an impact on the course of world events. 

Another woman has been murdered. On Sunday last, according to a police press release, 29-year-old Alexis Roxanne Harris, a mother of four and a farmer, breathed her last in a drain outside her sister’s West Demerara home, having run there to escape after she was brutally stabbed by the father of her children.

This year’s CSEC results continue to grab the headlines and remain a hot topic of discussion across Caricom.

One of the enduring developmental weaknesses in the governance process that has obtained in post-independence Guyana has been governments’ chronic inability to plan and execute major and strategically important development-related projects that have to do with the creation and maintenance of durable/reliable inventories.

In quite blunt language, the acting vice-president of operations at the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Therese Turner-Jones has cited the ineffectiveness of Bank programmes in Trinidad and Tobago where there isn’t an overarching national plan which is insulated from changes in government.

Exactly what Caricom heads of government will be doing at their next meeting discussing the CXC Mathematics performance this year is not something which is altogether comprehensible.

Not for the first time, a major discovery of cocaine on land here has raised serious questions about control over the vast hinterland and whether the authorities are doing enough to gain ground on traffickers.

President Irfaan Ali wants to think of Guyana as a truly progressive society with a government committed to ‘development.’

When American comedian Kevin Hart pre-launched his current world tour “Acting My Age” at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey at the end of June, patrons were warned that there would be no cellphones allowed.

A recent United Nations (UN) report on Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program, has painted a picture which strongly suggests that the old adage of ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’ is actually not what it appears to represent.

What is unfolding in Guyana at this time is, we are being told, an attempt to channel some of our petro resources into a wide-ranging countrywide physical makeover, aspects of which are ongoing in the capital and its environs and in other parts of the coastal plain.

In an advertisement in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek about developments in the mining sector, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) stated its commitment to mercury reduction.

Writing in this newspaper last week Dr Bertrand Ramcharan reflected on Guyana’s future political path in terms of democracy or autocracy.

Commissioning the expensive Schoonord to Crane four-lane highway on Thursday, President Ali delivered a stunner.

Two days ago there were rival demonstrations in Venezuela to mark one month since the July 28 election which all the evidence indicates President Nicolás Maduro lost quite resoundingly.