Editorial

The tension that has made the Korean peninsula a global flashpoint for much of 2013 appears to have subsided  with the toning down  of North Korea’s nuclear rhetoric directed at the South and the US and Pyongyang’s call last week for “senior level” nuclear talks with Washington.

Aside from the questions that would naturally arise about how the President in this day and age can instruct a state corporation against a course of action that it deems crucial to its operations, the public will be relieved that for the moment the proposed swingeing 26.67% tariff increase proposed by the Guyana Power and Light is on hold.

Every now and then the Government of Guyana hits us with something quite unexpected, and the week before last it was none other than President Donald Ramotar himself who did the honours.

The furore occasioned by the PRISM surveillance programme which collects phone call logs and Internet communication speaks directly to the confusion at the heart of America’s response to the 9/11 attacks, particularly its willingness to embrace the intrusive provisions of the Patriot Act.

What began on May 28 as a protest against the planned redevelopment of a park in Istanbul, to accommodate the construction of a replica Ottoman-era barracks and a mosque, has snowballed into a national political crisis for Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish acronym, AKP).

Yesterday the world observed International Day Against Child Labour with the focus on keeping children out of domestic work.

Hot on the heels of his visit to our part of the world, and particularly to Mexico, a member of the North Atlantic Free Trade Area (NAFTA), Chinese President Xi Jinping flew to California, this time for consultations with the acknowledged leader of that zone, the United States.

The visit to the Caribbean earlier this month by Chinese Leader Xi Jinping and the simultaneous announcement that the region would be the beneficiary of yet another huge tranche of financial aid from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) lends a predictable continuity to Beijing’s pursuit of the use of economic diplomacy as a tool with which to deepen its influence in the region.

While on the face of it the incident in April where children of the Kato Primary School were enlisted to fetch logs may appear to be relatively minor, it demonstrates vividly the need for urgent rejuvenation of local government.

The annual National Grade Six Assessment results were announced on Friday, and as is normal on these occasions the emphasis rightly was on the star performers, and by extension the top one per cent of the candidates.

Yesterday this newspaper reported that the Ministry of Human Services recorded more than 1,000 cases of child abuse in the first quarter of this year.

Even as Chinese President Xi Jinpeng was making his way around the region to promote more trade and cooperation between China and Latin America and the Caribbean, visiting Trinidad and Tobago (where he also held bilateral talks with those Caricom countries with which Beijing enjoys diplomatic relations), Costa Rica and Mexico, there was a buzz coming from the western rim of Latin America with the consolidation of the one-year-old Pacific Alliance.

“Think. Eat. Save: Reduce Your Foodprint,” is the theme under which World Environment Day was observed yesterday.

The Caricom arena will certainly have obtained some international notoriety last week, with the visits of US Vice President Biden, and then China’s President Xi Jinping to Trinidad & Tobago.

Last week’s Ministry of Home Affairs statement in the matter of the role of the police in the investigation into the  November 2012 death of a young man named Sadeek Juman is deserving of public comment if only because the content of the missive ventures beyond the type of official admonition of the performance of the Force to which we have grown accustomed.

Despite all of the heated rhetoric and bluster from its leading officials, it is now crystal clear that it is the government which has to be held responsible for the delay in the process leading to the amendment of the anti-money laundering legislation to bring the country into compliance with international norms and to stave off measures targeting financial transactions originating here.

There is something about governments which are in office for any extended period that causes them to become divorced from the electorate that put them there in the first place.

This is the season when we take stock, when we measure our steps towards nationhood.

Guyana is reportedly examining a proposal to set up a PetroCaribe Economic Zone (PEZ), made by Venezuela at the PetroCaribe summit held earlier this month in Caracas and attended by Prime Minister Samuel Hinds.

Last Thursday night, a bloodied 14-year-old and her parents go to the Turkeyen Police Station to report a crime; the child has been brutally raped.