Editorial

The issue of the future relationship between the European Union, on the one hand, and Russia on the other, continues to remain prominent in current international relations.

It may well be that as a nation we have grown comfortable with what has become a propensity for debating the issues that face us ‘to death,’ taking them in turn, turning them inside out, then, without making even as much as the slightest effort to apply a solution, moving on to the next issue or set of issues, ventilating them as if they were no more than pretexts for a casual intellectual exercise rather than real and pressing issues, requiring urgent attention.

Literally dozens of men, many of them just into adulthood have lost their lives in the danger-filled gold fields of the country in the last few years.

So now we know: Local Government Minister Norman Whittaker is a genuine psychic.

Watching from afar, it is hard to imagine that people in developed countries suffer the privations that are commonplace elsewhere.

Last Monday, Belgium, France, Germany and the United Kingdom solemnly marked the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I.

The nearly two months of frustration felt by citizens following the June 5 edict by Ministry of Home Affairs, which forced citizens to procure recent birth certificates in order to apply for passports might have come to an end last week, but indications are that the tedium is to be increased at the Central Immigration and Passport Office.

With the acceptance of the resignation of Minister of Sport Anil Roberts by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the country has now seen the 11th minister of her government dismissed, or feeling it necessary to resign.

We said in our editorial last Tuesday that after the occurrences at the PNCR’s Biannual Congress the weekend before last, it would be naive in the extreme for the political party to pretend that it will remain unaffected by those events and that it can simply assume an ‘as you were’ posture.

Enough has been reported on the $800M worth of pumps being supplied by the Indian company Surendra to warrant a thorough investigation of the deal by the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament.

Mr Granger, the newly re-elected leader of the PNCR seems to be operating inside a bubble.

Last week David Frum, senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly, political columnist, and former White House speechwriter, accused the New York Times of using staged photographs to illustrate a news report from Gaza.

It should come as no surprise that our bureaucrats cannot execute complicated projects in accordance with the rules, when they do not even know how to apply the appropriate procedures in the case of simple matters.

And so begins the long overdue cleaning of the city, which has been ignored for years and has been left to become a rotten disgrace.

The announcement by former Prime Minister and Barbados Labour Party leader Owen Arthur, that he would be leaving the party which he had led from 1994 to 2013, cannot have been wholly unexpected by the Barbadian public.

It would be naïve of the People’s National Congress/Reform to pretend that it can now assume what one might call an ‘as you were’ position following the proceedings at last weekend’s Congress.

Governments the world over that aspire to be responsive and accountable to the people function in a system of checks and balances and respect this.

One would have thought that the government should have registered at least a smidgeon of embarrassment after what Lt-Col Jerry Slijngard of the Suriname Coast Guard was reported to have said last week, but then again, the administration at this stage of its incumbency is probably incapable of embarrassment.

Last week the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent visited a residential building in Sha’af that had been hit by a shell fired from an Israeli tank.

Before the 2014 FIFA World Cup, most people expected the Brazilian team to be brilliant and the hosting of the event to be fraught with risk if not downright shambolic, given the preceding social tensions and protests and the last minute rush to be ready for kick-off.