Editorial

President Ramotar has now completed two years in office with a complement of ministers largely inherited from his predecessor. 

Four days ago the temperature in Winnipeg fell to -31°C (with a mind-numbing -48°C wind chill), the city’s coldest day in 80 years and colder than surface temperatures at the North Pole and on Mars, according to the Manitoba Museum. 

At the dawn of the New Year, most of us will have come through the past couple of weeks of religious observance, companionship and revelry, with great hopes for ourselves, our families and even our troubled country.

The year has come to an end in the Caricom part of the wider region with the IMF giving approval to Jamaica’s efforts at implementation of its Extended Fund Arrangement which had been laboriously finalized over a prolonged period that saw the electoral defeat of the Jamaica Labour Party Government led by Andrew Holness, and the assumption of office by the People’s National Party led by Portia Simpson, subsequently elected in December of 2011.

Once you understand the ebb and flow in the fortunes of Guyana’s public servants in their unending quest for better wages and, by extension, a higher standard of living, the paucity of the turnout for the December 20 protest march would have been entirely unsurprising.

The announcement by the government of the appointment of former judge, Mr Winston Moore as Ombudsman is most welcome.

There can be few places on the planet where it is more frustrating to live than Guyana.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s recent remarks on the perils of mass surveillance — broadcast by the UK’s Channel 4 television as an “alternative Christmas message” — are an eloquent reminder of the fragility of fundamental political freedoms, even in societies that pride themselves on being open and democratic.

The Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia is one of that country’s great sporting traditions.

Within the last fortnight or so, official and unofficial observers’ sights have been focused on the tussle between Russia and the European Union (EU) for influence over a Ukraine locked between them and internally divided within itself.

Valerie Amos would probably have dismissed the suggestion had it been made four or five years ago that the end of 2013 would find her engrossed in performing one of the least enviable tasks in international diplomacy, and yet that is precisely the position in which the 59-year-old international civil servant from Wakenaam  finds herself.

What could have led to the government’s decision to terminate its participation in the USAID-funded Leadership and Democracy (LEAD) project?

Valerie Amos would probably have dismissed the suggestion had it been made four or five years ago that the end of 2013 would find her engrossed in performing one of the least enviable tasks in international diplomacy, and yet that is precisely the position in which the 59-year-old international civil servant from Wakenaam  finds herself.

It was Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon who last week brought former president, Mr Bharrat Jagdeo, into the frame in relation to the granting of a controversial permission for a minerals survey in the New River Triangle that would in due course lead to mining.

President Obama’s use of clemency powers to commute the long-term prison sentences of eight non-violent drug offenders is a courageous acknowledgment of the need for urgent reforms in the US criminal justice system.

Michelle Bachelet, the centre-left candidate, was re-elected president of Chile on Sunday, ending the country’s brief flirtation with the centre-right, since its return to democracy in 1990, after Sebastián Piñera was elected four years ago.

Last week, a four-year-old boy died at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) where he had been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit after a minor operation to suture his tongue somehow went awry.

Nor entirely unexpectedly, and almost simultaneous with an IMF statement recommending strong measures to deal with a continuing, major fiscal deficit, the Government of Barbados has announced a series of financial and economic measures, the severity of which must undoubtedly have surprised the population.

There is simply no end to the succession of bizarre occurrences that characterize the political culture in North Korea.

While the duplicity of the Minister of Natural Resources, Mr Robert Persaud has been starkly exposed in two separate meetings he held on mining with no less than a standing committee of Parliament and the Guyana Human Rights Association, his woes are symptomatic of deeper problems in this 21-year-old reign by the PPP/C.