Editorial

What, to many governments in the hemisphere, and particularly the government of the United States of America as President Obama prepares to leave office, must surely be a severe disappointment, has been the referendum last week in Colombia which rejected the agreement negotiated by the government of President Juan Manuel Santos with the guerrilla grouping referring to itself as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Quite what possessed the authorities at the Santa Rosa Secondary School to strip search female students in relation to the matter of a missing sum of money is unclear.

During an interview with HGPTV Channel 67’s Nightly News in February this year, recently convicted drug trafficker Barry Dataram alleged that the Custom Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU) was corrupt and he implicated a high-ranking CANU official in the drug trade, while claiming that the official would take as much as $10 million to allow cocaine to leave the country.

A letter in our edition yesterday from a representative of the diaspora ‒ or at least a segment of it – relayed Guyanese expatriate concerns that the government had reneged on undertakings made to them prior to the election.

Earlier this week the Syrian pro-democracy and media activist Rami Jarrah used the word “holocaust” to describe the carnage underway in parts of Syria.

Trafficking in persons (TIP), or human trafficking, is a relatively new term in everyday parlance in Guyana, and while it has gained tremendous recognition in usage over the past few years, many persons still fail to come to grips with the fact that some activities that might have been considered immoral but not necessarily illegal, now fall within the definition of human trafficking and attract harsh legal consequences.

Education month ends tomorrow and as far as annual observances go, this was a pretty interesting one with several highs and lows.

The first debate between the contenders, the Republican Donald Trump and the Democrat Hillary Clinton, has now been held.

The announcement earlier this week that City Hall is to demolish more than fifty buildings in the city deemed to be in a ruinous state and posing a danger to their occupants and to the public as a whole, will be greeted with satisfaction by a number of citizens.

After many years of PPP/C governance during which there was a heavy veil drawn across the huge procurement sector, the people of this country have an excellent opportunity to begin learning how decisions are made osn high value public contracts and whether they can stand up to scrutiny.

On Tuesday, President David Granger reprised last year’s appeal to the UN General Assembly in relation to the border controversy with Venezuela, and accused that country of obstructing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s efforts for a final resolution. 

As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ready themselves for a debate that is likely to reach more than 100 million viewers, both candidates will recall the outcome of the first, infamous televised encounter between Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy.

It has been just about one week now since the Traffic Department of the GPF commenced ‘Operation Safeway,’ in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Infrastructure and the National Road Safety Council, aimed at achieving a marked reduction in road deaths through increased national awareness of road safety matters, a heightened police presence on the roads and the stringent application of the laws.

The practice by government officials to make grandiose pronouncements on issues around the time of national or international observances of said issues has been so overdone that it has become expected.

The Christian Democratic Party the leading party in the German coalition government, and from our perspective a central actor in the European Union and therefore in wider Europe, has now suffered a third election defeat in regional elections, this time in the capital city Berlin where a right-wing minority party, Alternative for Germany, has made a substantial showing at the polls (14.1% of the votes) on an anti-immigration platform.

It is a few weeks short of three years since the then President, Donald Ramotar, launched the Micro and Small Enterprise Development (MSED) Programme in October 2013 with much aplomb at what is now the Arthur Chung Convention Centre.

An indispensable facet of good governance is the considerate presentation of important decisions and ensuring that there is transparency coupled with the willingness to provide explanations if challenged.

The vendors’ story is well-worked terrain. The issues go back a long way, and the arguments in relation to them have not changed over the years.

In one of his lighter moments, T S Eliot – who made his living as an editor – once conceded that ”some editors are failed writers.”

In August 2015, the City Constabulary of the Georgetown Mayor & City Council terminated the services of three trainee city constables on the basis of them becoming pregnant before the expiration of a specified two year window during which they were prohibited from becoming pregnant.