Editorial

If it hadn’t been for Kwakwani holding its community elections in defiance of the central authorities, most people would not have known that the government had rescinded a 1983 ministerial order which gave oversight of Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) to the respective Regional Democratic Councils (RDCs).

Recent speeches at the back-to-back political conventions in the United States must have scared anyone unfamiliar with the pandering populism and outright propaganda that precedes an American election.

Following the massive success of the Games of the 30th Olympiad, the London 2012 Paralympics have been unfolding to rave reviews and dramatically changed perceptions of the disabled in the United Kingdom and those parts of the world fortunate enough to receive some television coverage of the event.

The great thinkers have taught us that silence is golden and that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt, but there are times when this same much-revered virtue becomes our enemy.

Trinidad & Tobago, caught in the headwinds of Olympic gold medal and bronze medal successes, was able to put all its troubles aside last week, as it celebrated, following Jamaica,  fifty years as a sovereign state.

Shortly before the start of last month’s Sixteenth Summit of Heads of Non Aligned countries in Tehran, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird issued a robust statement urging United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to turn down the invitation to attend the meeting in the Iranian capital.

On the heels of Mining Week this year, the Chairman of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, Major General (rtd) Joe Singh resigned from his position citing a motion of no confidence that had been moved against him by the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) at one of their meetings. 

The fog surrounding the Cheddi Jagan expansion project is like the mist which periodically envelops Timehri in the early hours of the morning, shrouding familiar features and obscuring detail.

Some weeks ago, at a ceremony to mark the 27th anniversary of the death of President Forbes Burnham, Mr Granger, newly elected leader of the PNCR, paid homage to Burnham’s “visionary leadership, his astute statesmanship and his watchful guardianship of our young nation for over two decades from 1964 to 1985.”

Last week, there was a lot of sadness surrounding two Americans, both called Armstrong.

Just about a week ago, the New Opportunity Corps (NOC)—the juvenile detention facility at Onderneeming on the Essequibo Coast—saw a mass breakout of inmates followed by rampages that included fires and which carried over into the next day.

A political succession after a death of the head of government in Ethiopia, certainly does not have the same resonance in the Caribbean today, that it would have had either when Haile Selassie was removed (some claim smothered to death) in 1974, or even when his successor Haile Mariam Mengistu was overthrown in 1987, after a civil war led by forces effectively under the command of Meles Zenawi who assumed power as Prime Minister in 1991, and died in the course of medical attention in Brussels last week.

Independent journalists and newspapers in Myanmar are celebrating what, in their circumstances, is a small though not insignificant concession by the government to allow the independent media a greater measure of elbow room to function outside the stranglehold of a political culture that has long viewed freedom of expression as consistent with anti-state activity.

Guyana’s ventilation at the Organization of American States’ Permanent Council meeting last week of the Linden crisis and the shape of things since the November 28, 2011 general elections is yet another sign of a government floundering and unwilling or perhaps incapable of coming to grips with reality.

The Government of Guyana never loses its capacity to surprise.  On August 3 it abstained from a UN General Assembly vote on a resolution condemning Syria for its indiscriminate use of heavy weapons in civilian areas and its widespread violations of human rights.

The US elections may seem safely distant to outsiders but many American pundits are confidently predicting a struggle for Obama to survive the disappointed hopes and lack of change in his first term.

Julian Assange, the founder of the controversial website WikiLeaks, is wanted in Sweden for alleged sexual crimes.

If Republican Congressman Todd Akin is to be remembered for anything other than his awfully ignorant and horribly tasteless comments which were publicized last Sunday, it would be for coining what could possibly be the most offensive phrase of this century: ‘legitimate rape.’

Probably hardly noticed in the English-speaking Caribbean, a new President, Danilo Medina, was sworn in last Thursday in the Dominican Republic, after elections held there on May 20 of this year.

The Donald Ramotar administration has spent much of the eight months or so that it has been in office fending off demands for independent inquiries into various allegations of corruption said to have been perpetrated during the period when Mr Bharrat Jagdeo’s government was in office.