Editorial

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.

There will be a genuine sigh of relief on the expected conclusion today of a deal between the government and a delegation from Region 10 (Upper Demerara/Upper Berbice) on a raft of economic issues for Linden.

While events in Linden were commanding public attention, the National Toshaos Council Conference was held in Georgetown between August 6 and August 10. 

Many years ago, a primary school teacher in Georgetown divided her class into two halves on opposite sides of the room and placed a cardboard box on a table between them.

Jacques Rogge, the Belgian surgeon who is president of the International Olympic Committee, is probably a very charming man to those who know him well.

When schools reopen in a few weeks’ time, some 830 children between the ages of 5 and 12 years at Linden will be at a loss.

As both Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica have been celebrating fifty years of independence this month, the rich results of their countries’ participation in the recently concluded London Olympic Games will undoubtedly have brought a welcome relief to their citizens, and even more importantly, to their governmental leaderships.

Presumably, the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) would have much preferred that the verbal jousting between supporters of David Granger and Carl Greenidge, the two candidates for the leadership of the party, not enter the public domain.

It is refreshing to see ministerial initiative embedded in a results-oriented framework and targeted at enhancing service to the public.