Editorial

With elections due by May this year, Trinidad’s People’s Partnership coalition government seems to be experiencing a certain amount of turbulence.

By last weekend the academic staff of the University of Guyana had not only thumbed their noses at Vice-Chancellor Jacob Opadeyi’s five per cent pay increase offer for 2015 but had decided to hold out on their demand for a sixty per cent increase.

Seventeen-year-old Threeion Gittens died a horrible death on Thursday, crushed under the weight of a large amount of paddy at Caricom Rice Mills Limited (CRML).

Exactly why the government will not condemn the promotion of two police officers who are known to have been guilty of the torture of a boy is extremely puzzling.

The speed at which information technology advances, and the rate at which its growth drives online commerce, remains remarkable even in an age accustomed to digital wonders.

In their 2012 book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty – Guyanese would no doubt find this particular juxtaposition of three Ps somewhat intriguing and ironic, even if unintentional – the Turkish-American economist Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the British political scientist James A Robinson of Harvard University provide some fascinating ideas about economic development in both developing and developed countries.

To say that the physical environment at the University of Guyana (UG) is disgraceful would be to make a colossal understatement.

Contemporaneously with the drastic fall of oil prices, Caribbean states found themselves, towards the end of January, required to be in Washington to attend what was referred to as the First Caribbean Energy Security Summit, a multilateral meeting attended by the other major Western donors, Britain and Canada.

In its issue of January 18, 2015, the Stabroek News published an article based on an interview with United States Chargé d’Affaires Bryan Hunt which dealt in the main with two issues that are on the front burner of relations between Georgetown and Washington.

On January 26, at an event organised by the Indian Arrival Committee to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the horrific slaying of 11 persons in the East Coast village of Lusignan, Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Juan Edghill was reported by the Government Information Agency as saying “We still have issues of crime and security in our country but we must never mix and confuse the difference between regular crime and robbery as against what took place here in Lusignan”.

There are some general truths about tertiary education that apply everywhere, the primary one being that you cannot get a decent university on the cheap.

China’s current crackdown on Virtual Private Networks (VPN’s) – which allow uncensored use of the internet — may well prove to be a milestone in the country’s increasing restrictions on free expression.

Oscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica (1986-90 and 2006-10), won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the guerrilla wars ravaging Central America and for promoting peace and democracy in the isthmus.

Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Helen Clark named 2015, the year of tough choices for world leaders.

It seems to be the case that President Obama’s recent State of the Union message to the Congress took his prime audience, the Joint Session of the Senate and the House of Representatives, by surprise.

For as long as the issue of law and order, in all of its various facets, remains a national challenge – and this has unquestionably been the case for several years now – those institutions that are responsible for ensuring that the peace is kept and the law upheld will come under public scrutiny.

Torture by any agent of the state whenever proved must be met with the most exacting punishment and at least immediate removal from the force and no chance of re-employment within the same sector.

So, the President has named an election date. Or has he?

Three weeks ago Islamist militants descended on Baga, a town in Nigeria’s northeast Borno state, and set about destroying property and killing civilians.

The position of President Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela is looking increasingly precarious in the face of a worsening economic crisis.