Editorial

There has been an understandable public preoccupation (to say nothing of bewilderment) over the recent disclosures regarding the expenditure of healthy sums of tax dollars to meet medical and dental bills for ministers of government and other public officials.

On Tuesday evening, Zaharudeen Rozan was arrested for allegedly damaging his neighbour’s fence and taken by the police to the Parika lock-ups.

Yesterday and on Friday this newspaper reported on the medical expenses of government officials paid for by the state during the period 2012-13.

Questions about the secretly negotiated deal which approved plans for a transoceanic waterway three times as long and twice as deep as the Panama Canal stand at the centre of a heated political quarrel over government transparency in Nicaragua.

There is, understandably, a lot of fuss surrounding the surprise selection by the PPP (independent of the Civic component) of Ambassador Elisabeth Harper as the prime ministerial running mate for President Donald Ramotar in the forthcoming elections.

Today marks six days since the former Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mrs Elisabeth Harper was named as the People Progressive Party/Civic’s (PPP/C) prime ministerial candidate in the forthcoming May 11 general elections.

The announcement by the United States and Cuba that they would seek to resume normal relations will in some measure be seen by some observers as an indication of a fulfilment of gradual, but persistent changes in Caribbean geopolitical relationships, some more prominent than others.

The death late last week of a commuter reportedly following an altercation with a minibus conductor over the decibel level of the music being played inside a bus would not have come as a complete shock to those who are familiar with the seamier side of the minibus ‘culture’.

The selection by the PPP/C of Ambassador Elisabeth Harper as its prime ministerial candidate for the forthcoming general elections must rank as one of the biggest political surprises in the independence history of the country.

It is not often that the political cognoscenti of this land are mystified; after all, that which is outrageous has become so commonplace in our little universe that the term ‘bizarre’ is fast losing its meaning.

Last week the Guardian published a report on the use of child labour at brick-making factories in Nepal.

Following the St Kitts and Nevis general election on Monday, conducted in an atmosphere of calm, with a high voter turnout, Tuesday was a day of extreme post-electoral uncertainty and tension in the twin-island federation.

The crazy bottleneck that constitutes Camp Street between Quamina and Middle Streets on both sides of the avenue from Monday to Friday, unless there’s a holiday, is as much a result of poor planning as it is the new city traffic culture.

As countries essentially within what is sometimes referred to as the Western sphere of geopolitical influence, the Governments of Guyana and the other Caricom states must often ponder on the extent to which the world seems to have changed quite dramatically since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its own post-1945 sphere of influence.

Are we in the throes of a power struggle amongst the heirs of Nelson Mandela that might one day threaten, perhaps even derail the formidable post-apartheid power base of the African National Congress (ANC) and with it the democracy that has won equally generous measures of global attention and acclaim?

The Cummingsburg Accord struck on Saturday by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) to contest the May 11 general elections on a joint slate will go down – win or lose – as the most significant coalition in opposition politics since independence, defying cynics who thought that it was impossible.

Power is seductive, and its siren song has been responsible for many of our political travails.

In one of his memorable formulations, the great British historian and essayist Thomas Babington Macaulay observed (using the pronoun customary for unanswerable judgements) that “we know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality.”

Even as the process of rapprochement between Cuba and the United States of America continues, with a not unexpected ebb and flow in the negotiations and a certain political caution, there is one perhaps surprising point of convergence, albeit for different reasons, between Havana and the staunchly anti-Castro Cuban exile community in Miami: the need to reform or do away with the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA).

Starting March 1 and continuing for at least the next 3 months, Guyanese will pay 10% less for the electricity they consume.