Editorial

Just days before the fourth anniversary of his government in office, President Irfaan Ali expressed pride in the government’s housing programme.

While during its Congress in May the PPP removed the references to Marxism-Leninism and Socialism from its constitution, it retained democratic centralism, the organisational principle of the ruling party in communist states.

International historians and social scientists agree that the world is in the midst of a polycrisis and this has probably been the case for quite a number of years now.

Once again, West Indies cricketers are grabbing the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

One of the discomfiting things about the behaviour of the incumbent political administration is that it is not in the habit of providing public responses to matters of pointed national importance with either the alacrity or the forcefulness which those situations deserve.

On Thursday, July 18, two ranks from the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) were arrested by Police at about 3:45 am  after their vehicle was intercepted and searched, and they were found to be in possession of 22 bulky bags containing 154 lbs of cannabis.

Venezuela goes to the polls today.  This is an election which under normal circumstances would hold the same level of interest for Guyanese as one in Brazil or Colombia or Suriname, for example.

On Wednesday, July 24th, the police conducted an early morning operation on Sandy Babb Street, Kitty during which they found 26 handguns and high-powered rifles and a large amount of ammunition.

In a recent feature on education the Economist wrote that a mass of research showed “Developing brainiacs is the most reliable way to stoke economic growth.”

The movers and shakers who conceptualised, wrote, negotiated and achieved agreement on the  17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), must have hoped that by now, six years away from the end date, there would have been significantly more progress made.

“Ease the pounding of my heart          By the quieting of my mind.          Steady my hurried pace          With the vision of the eternal reach of time.

Leaving aside – for the moment – the just ended seventy-odd days of industrial action by state-employed teachers, which eventually gave way to discourses between the Ministry of Education and the Guyana Teachers’ Union on the matter of teachers’ emoluments, there had been much earlier indications that large ‘chunks’ of our education system that had to do with the condition of ‘good order’ that is indispensable to an amenable teaching/learning environment had, across a wide swathe of the state-run education system, deteriorated.  

In a Project Syndicate column in the July 19 edition of Stabroek News, the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB’s) Chief Economist Eric Parrado addressed  what he called political short-termism in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) where policymaking and planning are not consistent between different administrations.

The Constitution together with Guyana’s laws may seem complicated for the average citizen to decipher, but that notwithstanding most of the issues which they concern are easy to apprehend.

On July 7th    the body of Evelyn Alfonzo Alves was found at Diamond, East Bank Demerara with a bullet to the head, the type of execution-style killing that raises all kinds of questions.

At the 158th anniversary symposium of the police, cumbersomely titled ‘Modernising Policing by Balancing Technology, Community Engagement, & Global Best Practices,’ Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn on Tuesday referred to a 20% decrease in serious crime over the past few years.

In two different parts of the world, there are contretemps unfolding that have alcohol at the centre.

It is quite understandable if the subject of West Indies cricket was farthest from the minds of Caribbean sports fans over the past weekend.

Going forward, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) governments now run the risk of being unacceptably delinquent in the execution of their responsibility to the countries of the region in the wake of Beryl’s rampage and the toll it has taken on what, in some parts of the region, had already been an existing serious food security deficit.

Whenever the 2020 term of the PPP/C Government is assessed in terms of procurement corruption, the award of the $865m Belle Vue pump station to Tepui Inc will stand out as one of the sternest indictments.