Editorial

Rapt attention has no doubt been paid by the public to the manoeuvrings surrounding the contract of the Chief Election Officer, Mr Gocool Boodoo.

There are few articles which have stirred as much interest in recent times as Mr Ralph Ramkarran’s column two weeks ago in the Sunday Stabroek entitled ‘The Kleptocratic Republic of Guyana.’

The saga of Edward Snowden, trapped in an airport lounge while trying to escape the long hand of an aggrieved superpower, has obscured the enormity of his disclosures.

Caricom heads of government, in Trinidad for their 34th regular meeting, commemorated yesterday the 40th anniversary of the signing of the founding Treaty of Chaguaramas.

Guyana’s dismal record on maternal mortality would have contributed to the near-fail the region received on this target when the 2013 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report was released on Monday in Geneva, Switzerland.

Over the last week President Obama made his second visit to the African continent, the first having been in July 2009.

The sense of incompleteness which, from the start, had appeared to characterize Egypt’s ‘first revolution’ – including the election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi to the presidency last year – now manifests itself in waves of civil insurrection.

At every twist and turn along the way, the government is being confronted with diplomatic and not so diplomatic warnings about corruption and the threat that this poses to investment, good governance and the rule of law here.

On 1st October this year, the University of Guyana will celebrate 50 years since it first opened its doors.

The US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down key provisions of the Defence of Marriage Act has been hailed as a landmark moment for gay rights in America.

Dr Moisés Naím, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a global international relations think tank, was trade and industry minister of Venezuela in the early 1990s and then editor-in-chief of the acclaimed Foreign Policy journal for 14 years.

Earlier this month, this newspaper published a photograph of a man shoulder-deep in a muddy drain along Mandela Avenue.

Following upon revelations emanating from the United States, casting a shadow over the career of Mr Jack Warner, popular politician, heavyweight Minister and close advisor to the Trinidad Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, that forced his resignation not only from his ministry but also from his chairmanship of the ruling People’s Partnership coalition, Trinidad & Tobago seems engulfed with yet another suddenly arising political contention.

The government of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been mindful not to go down the same road as others – that of Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan being the most recent – that have opted for bullish, often brutal responses to popular protest.

“GAWU contends that because of GuySuCo’s `poor husbandry and mismanagement’ there are not enough canes in the ground this crop to meet the corporation’s … target”.

It seems many moons ago since the PPP/C embarked on its odyssey in government, while the commitments and assurances it gave then sound to us now like the covenants from a simpler and less cynical era.

The unexpected victory of Hassan Rouhani in Iran’s presidential elections has raised hopes that dialogue may soon ease the US sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy for the last three years.

There is not a lot in Brazil that is more important than football but on Wednesday, not even Brazil’s victory over Mexico in the Confederation Cup could divert attention from the wave of protests that have shaken the country this week.

At the end of last month, a high-level international panel, which had been meeting under the auspices of the United Nations to look at the world beyond the 2015 end of timetable of the Millennium Development Goals, submitted its report to that body.

Increasingly intense diplomacy among the Nato powers about the turmoil in Syria has been a feature of the last few weeks leading to this week’s G8 meeting hosted by Britain in Northern Ireland, once a similar scene of political-religious and military turmoil.