Editorial

Once the final results of the November 2011 poll became known the return to office by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic was not the major issue on the post-elections agenda.

After a year of debilitating political confrontation that has poisoned the atmosphere in Parliament and spawned divisive but potent protests such as at Linden, one can understand the deep sense of frustration and bewilderment that the average member of the public feels and the angst at what the approaching year may bring.

Most people would have found that 2012 was not a year to heal the national psyche or lift the mood.

As the United States prepares to launch itself over the “fiscal cliff” – despite Washington’s cursory gestures at negotiation – it seems that the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis still looms over the American economy as darkly as when President Obama first took office.

We have come to the time of the year when it is customary, almost de rigueur, to look back and reflect on the past year’s happenings.

Events over the last fortnight in the North-east Asian peninsula and its environs have created tremors in a wider world that would include the United States and Russia.

One of the more glaring – and costly – security failings of the government has been its woeful neglect of the need for a more robust law and order presence in our interior mining communities.

Death came within a flash and violently to six occupants of a boat in the Pomeroon River on Tuesday.

After two decades it is difficult for a party like the PPP whose only apparent objective in politics is to retain power, to bamboozle anyone about its real motives.

A week after the mass shooting of 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Connecticut, the politics of gun control has never been more prominent in American life.

Last Friday’s editorial, which focused on Presi-dent Ramotar’s southward gaze towards the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and deeper integration with the South American continent, ended somewhat tantalisingly with the thought that the shift of perspective away from the Caribbean Community might “reflect a growing perception that Caricom may have, for the time being, reached the limits of its possibilities.”

Last Monday, Dwayne Jordan joined a small local group which seldom receives new members when he was sent to death row by Justice Navindra Singh to await his execution for the murder of his wife, Claudine Rampersaud, on June 14, 2007.

That we have carried three editorials on the Syrian uprising in the course of this year, indicates how this issue has dominated the news and the attention of the major powers.

Recent television pictures of a frail, listless-looking Nelson Mandela accompanying news reports of a bout of illness which took him into hospital briefly serve as a poignant reminder of the mortality of South Africa’s iconic first black President.

In what was a fruitful encounter, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) on Friday breakfasted with the media during which it laid out its priority projects and issues it would like to be addressed.

It is certainly not unknown for the nerve centre of official communications in this country to disseminate bizarre statements, but the one which filtered into the inboxes of unsuspecting media houses on Tuesday was exceptional even by Gina’s none too balanced standards.

The apparent suicide of a nurse in London, a few days after she had been hoaxed by Australian radio DJs who pretended to be members of the royal family, has highlighted the difficulty of effectively regulating the media in a digital age.

Addressing a summit of leaders from the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), in Brasilia, on December 7, President Donald Ramotar alluded to our fabled continental destiny in his assertion that while Guyana attaches “significant importance” to its membership of Caricom, his government also believes that “continental integration has become more relevant and necessary for further development.”

It is bad enough that for more than two decades, residents of and visitors to Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, have had their senses assaulted by the sight and smell of garbage.

Over the last three weeks, Kamla Persad Bissessar’s People’s Partnership Government of Trinidad and Tobago experienced something approximating to a political trauma.