Editorial

An examination of the recent reports of the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) on complaints before it has underlined how easy it is for corruption to take over the tendering system and for unjust contract awards to be made to the detriment of public safety and the monies of the people of this country.

The epic of the Bamia Primary School contract rumbles on. The contract was awarded in November 2021 and was intended to run for twenty months, but its completion date has been postponed more times than anyone cares to remember.

Making a brief virtual intervention at the CARICOM Regional Cricket Conference in Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday and later in a detailed video presentation, President Irfaan Ali made the announcement that Guyana will be launching the World Premier League (WPL) which will promote West Indian cricket.

The scandals surrounding the award of the Tepui contract in particular, but other contracts too, raise serious questions about corruption under this administration.

One of the striking observations from the recent exposure of the assault on a Venezuelan schoolgirl by five of her peers is that the usual ad hocery, now a hallmark of this and other administrations, has obviously been employed with regard to the influx of foreign children to the country and in our schools.

Every facet of today’s society has been infiltrated by these smooth talkers, those gifted-with-the-gab personality types.

If this is not to say that the recent collapse of the roof of the Stabroek Market wharf was, in considerable measure, the result of years of official inattention to its progressive deterioration, there was little doubt that the first official government response to the occurrence would have been to make the ‘political point’ about the tragedy occurring on the municipal ‘watch’ of an APNU-led local government administration.

Can it possibly be the case that the historic constitutional reforms of over two decades ago conceived of a Public Procurement Commission (PPC) that would be toothless?

Last week a Venezuelan schoolgirl attending Queenstown Secondary School was physically assaulted by a group of her female classmates while students from the same school as well as others cheered on the bullies.

On Tuesday Guyana welcomed a statement from the UN Security Council following its meeting last week to address Venezuela’s law creating a new state in Essequibo.

Whenever challenged about its longstanding nemesis, corruption, the preferred refrain from the ruling PPP/C is always for the claimant to present the evidence.

It has been 117 years since the advent of synthetic plastic, so, literally no one alive today has lived in an entirely plastic-free world and no one ever will.

In 1850 German physicist and mathematician Rudolf Clausius published his most important paper, “On the moving force of heat,” which stated the basic ideas of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

It is not uncommon for instances of internal bickering to arise within political parties in Guyana though, in the final analysis, those rarely if ever escalate into anything that shakes their foundations, since, in the heat of whatever those differences might be, there usually exists a singular sense of purpose embedded in the deeply polarizing nature of Guyanese politics.

Last week, Attorney General Anil Nandlall SC acted upon the instructions of President Irfaan Ali and issued an edict to ministries on the establishment of units to determine where public projects are experiencing unjustifiable delays or there is evidence of poor work.

Last week Venezuela dominated the headlines once again. On Monday that country submitted its counter-memorial to the ICJ in relation to the case filed by Guyana six years ago seeking the Court’s decision on the validity of the 1899 Arbitral Award.

ExxonMobil’s cheery announcement yesterday that it had made a final investment decision for the Whiptail development  in the lucrative Stabroek Block has to be declared to be what it really is; another rip-off of the Guyanese people facilitated by the PPP/C government.

More than three weeks have passed since Gecom wrote The New Movement’s former executive member Dr Gerald Forde, that it was having a second look at the question of who is the bona fide Representative of TNM’s List.

On Sunday last, the world observed World Health Day, the 76th anniversary of the founding of the World Health Organisation (WHO), under the theme ‘My health, my right’.

In today’s social media-expedited world the younger generation’s time, thoughts, and energy are so consumed with ‘staying in the know’ about a whole host of inconsequential happenings that it is cause for concern.