Editorial

Following the unrestrained plummeting in the price for crude oil over the past seven to eight months, its plunge below US$50 on January 7—the lowest in six years—has led finally to the government, through Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh announcing a reduction in the price of fuel on Monday.

It appears that the Middle East continues, in one dramatic way or another, to be at the centre of world events.

Leaving aside its ongoing ‘discourse’ with Washington and London over the prorogation of the National Assembly and the limbo in which the country is being held (at least up to the time of the writing of this editorial) on the matter of a date for general elections, the ruling party has, all too often, been drawn into prickly exchanges with some resident heads of mission, notably those of the United States and the United Kingdom over issues like crime, law-enforcement deficiencies, drug-trafficking and local government elections.

In time it may become one of the most important arteries ever built in the country’s history but today the road to the proposed Amaila Falls Hydropower Project serves little purpose while its maintenance could cost at least $200m annually, according to Public Works Minister Robeson Benn at his press conference on Friday to review 2014.

Discretion, tact and subtlety are not characteristics by which the PPP is normally distinguished, and so it came as no particular surprise last week when they went trampling diplomatic niceties underfoot to deliver yet another round of invective against representatives of foreign missions here.

As slumping oil prices spread political and economic uncertainty through many parts of the world it is becoming clear that a sudden abundance of cheap oil could offer governments opportunities for long-delayed reforms once they have weathered their current short-term crises.

The recent release by Cuban authorities of the last of 53 political prisoners in accordance with the terms of the historic deal announced by President Barack Obama and President Raúl Castro, on December 17, 2014, after 18 months of secret negotiations, marked another step forward in the process of rapprochement between Cuba and the United States of America.

In the 2014 national budget read in Parliament towards the end of March last year, the government allocated $1 billion towards a campaign called ‘Clean-up my Country’.

Last week Trinidad & Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar addressed her country on the possible consequences for the Twin Island Republic of the rapid decline in oil and gas prices on the international market.

Last Sunday really ought to have seen a triumphant celebration across the entire Caribbean following the West Indies’ record-breaking run-chase (236 for 6 in 19.2 overs) to defeat a shell-shocked South Africa who must surely have thought that the batting feats of Faf du Plessis and company had taken the game beyond the West Indies.

With two weeks of the new year nearly finished, President Ramotar is cavalierly treating his solemn commitment to the country to name a date for general elections.

The urge by those who rule over us to curb freedom of speech can find expression in insidious ways, and is not always enunciated in explicit fashion by the General Secretary of the PPP in the course of his press briefings.

Oscar Wilde, who spent a lifetime mocking sanctimonious people and urging them to be less righteous, once quipped that “a man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”

In his most recent Sunday Stabroek column, ‘Negotiating the coalition,’ Ralph Ramkarran lays out a scenario for a possible coalition government, if the PPP/C were to win executive power with a plurality but not a majority of the votes in the next general election.

One need not wait for the Guyana Police Force’s dissemination of its annual statistics to come to the conclusion that 2014 was a tragic and bloody one for many road users.

Events in different parts of the world in the course of this year have been forcing observers to question whether the period of détente, or relaxation of negative relations between leading powers, signalled by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of one party dominance of that state, is coming to an end.

Ministers of government have an obligation to manage the image of their portfolios efficiently, to seek to ensure, that, as far as possible, their ministries and departments pass the public test in so far as service-delivery is concerned.

Word that former President Bharrat Jagdeo has been chosen by the Commonwealth Secretariat to head its observer mission to Sri Lanka’s elections where Prime Minister Rajapakse faces a serious challenge evoked strong comment here.

Guyana enters 2015 in a state of uncertainty. President Ramotar in his New Year’s address to the nation rabbited on about all the wonderful plans his government had for the coming months without acknowledging that the nation is operating in a kind of political vacuum, and any plans he might have, therefore, are virtually meaningless.

“Is not the pastness of the past the more profound, the more legendary, the more immediately it falls before the present?”