Editorial

Informed observers are unlikely to dwell for any length of time on last Friday’s ‘engagement’ between a ministerial team that included Prime Minister Mark Phillips and Senior Minister in the Ministry of Finance Dr.

The revelation last week that peak demand for electricity was beginning to exceed GPL’s generation capacity appears to have come as something of a surprise to the general populace and apparently the government of the day. 

Some diasporas in the United States attempt to influence how Washington engages with their countries of origin.

Given the breadth of the illicit contact between the Ministry of Natural Resources and ExxonMobil’s subsidiary, EEPGL to ultimately deprive this country of oil profits, the government and those involved must be held fully accountable.

President Irfaan Ali is not a man to be inconvenienced by legal niceties. 

The details are redolent of a script from a really terrible B movie.

Last week Sunday, the Guyana Amazon Warriors finally overcame the label of ‘always the bridesmaid never the bride’ when they emerged as the winners of the eleventh edition of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) T20 Final, after stumbling at the final hurdle on five occasions in the first seven years of the tournament.

From its outset, the ‘high octane’ (somewhat glitzy) tempo that characterized the media reporting on the October 9-13 Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) was rather out of sync with the sense of doldrums and crises that have since emerged from the much more sober and serious assessments of the condition of agriculture, and by extension, the state of food security in the Caribbean.

On September 21st,  Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo reported that President Irfaan Ali had ordered that an investigation be swiftly conducted to determine who authorised personnel at the Ministry of Natural Resources to bypass advice from the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and enter into direct negotiations with ExxonMobil to reduce US$214 million in questionable cost oil claims flagged by IHS Markit to US$3 million.

The week before last Minister of Home Affairs Robeson Benn and Deputy Police Commissioner ‘Operations’ Ravindradat Budhram flew to China to attend the Global Public Security Forum.

The signs have been clear since the first days of this administration: the privatisation of public services is a policy.

It is not just the auctioning of Guyana’s oil blocks which have set Venezuela off on its current track of impolitic responses. 

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

Many adults today, more so the hip, younger crowd, those au fait with the latest technology and fashion trends, tend to credit themselves as being ‘street smart’ (or in local parlance, having ‘road sense’) and unlikely to be scammed by any two-bit hustler.

The earliest public disclosure on Guyana’s first confirmed oil ‘strike’ by ExxonMobil back in 2015, was, without question, one of the most significant pieces of public information ever to be disseminated to the Guyanese public in the country’s history up to that time. 

On September 21st we referred in these columns to the case of a young woman who had recently faced disrespect and mistreatment at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) – the country’s main public health facility.

President Irfaan Ali appeared before the UN General Assembly last week to condemn the threats from Venezuela about Guyana’s auction of offshore oil blocks.

Asked in Washington last week how disappointed he was that only six companies had made bids in Guyana’s offshore block auction, President Ali predictably bristled and quickly came up with an excuse: “We went out to auction at a time when major economies in the world are basically saying to oil producers ‘we’re not going to finance you’ so you’re going to a market where raising of capital is an issue.”

This country has some remarkable top CSEC students.  While comparative data with the rest of the region has not yet been announced, it is not unreasonable to suppose that some of them will secure awards for individual subjects, given their astonishing results.

On Sunday, even as World Patient Safety Day was being observed, readers of this newspaper had access to the first-hand account of a young woman who had recently faced disrespect and mistreatment at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).