Editorial

While much of our attention, with regard to events in the wider region, has recently been on the re-election of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and the ongoing and cautious process of change in Cuba, significant developments in not-so-far-away Colombia have not merited as much comment.

You can tell a lot about a society from the types of buildings it produces.

Two events relating to Cuba, and occurring last week, placed the country in the spotlight.

The political administration was bound to come out ‘batting’ for Clement Rohee.

In an interview reported in this newspaper on October 15, 2012, Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman stated that despite the sometimes acrimonious debates and what has been described as the infrequency of sittings, the 10th Parliament has achieved significantly in its eight months of operation.

It is a pity perhaps that Governor Lethem’s idea of a railway link between the Rupununi and Georgetown in the 1940s was never followed up.

The British historian John Keegan once wrote that the political history of the twentieth century could be approximated to the biographies of six men.

This week marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis, when the two superpowers of the day, the USA and the USSR, were engaged, at the height of the Cold War, in arguably the most dangerous game of political chicken ever.

It was Aristotle who called poverty “the parent of revolution and crime”; and he was not wrong.

It is tempting to use this title for an editorial intended to comment on the news that the British, or United Kingdom, government has arrived at a conclusion to long continuing discussion with the devolved government of Scotland on the issue of a referendum for Scotland.

At the junction of Regent and Camp streets, the modest old commercial buildings of a few decades ago have been completely supplanted by twin towers, multi-storied glass and concrete edifices, symbols of a contemporary era of outrageous investments in new-fashioned shopping malls and complexes that sound the death knell of what was once clusters of more modest downtown stores that offered a more quaint commercial culture.

It goes without saying that anytime a public road is blocked and used as a beachhead to confront law enforcers that this must be strongly condemned.

The world’s cultural heritage is always at risk in times of war or when fanatics come to dominate an administration.

Almost fifty years ago, the editors of the New World Fortnightly published a feature on “The Intellectual Tradition and Social Change in the Caribbean.”

So, President Hugo Chávez has been re-elected with a healthy 55 percent of the popular vote, though by a slimmer margin of victory than in the 2006 election – 10 percentage points as opposed to 26.

When Mrs Vanessa Wilson-Johnson accepted the position as headmistress of the Mahdia Secondary School, she would have done so cognizant of the fact that she would have to leave her home, family and familiar surroundings.

United States elections, and especially presidential elections, elicit a natural fascination from citizens of Caribbean countries, and with the victory of President Obama this has certainly increased in recent years.

Setting aside the importance of finding out the truth about the circumstances that attended the killing of the three men at Linden during the July 18 protest in the mining town, the ongoing work of the Commission of Enquiry is important for another equally good reason, which is that it brings us – and more particularly the Guyana Police Force – face to face with the principle of accountability as an important tenet of democracy.

Just when one thought it impossible that the police could slip further into the reckless use of firearms and unprofessionalism, law enforcers have been caught up in a shooting outside of a popular city establishment which has left bystander Mr Dameon Belgrave of Pouderoyen dead.

By the time today’s edition of Sunday Stabroek lands on the breakfast table, thousands of Venezuelans will be queueing up to cast their votes in what is by far the most important poll in this hemisphere, bar the US election next month.