Editorial

After months of speculation, the fate of Bo Xilai, former Party Secretary of Chongqing and one of the country’s best known ‘princelings’ seems to have been settled.

Events over the past few years involving governments in the Caribbean Community would seem to reflect an increasingly unwelcome and worrying trend in the region’s politics.

The face of the future is an older one. Longevity is the new name of the game.

In the midst of what has been clearly the last stage of campaigning prior to the United States presidential elections, President Obama had obviously decided to treat the proceedings of the 68th UN General Assembly as subordinate to his campaign requirements and, some may have felt, something of a sideshow to what many Americans consider the greatest show on earth.

One of the unintended consequences of the UN’s involvement in seeking to bring an end to conflict between and among states is the risk – an increasingly high one these days – that its reputation as a peacekeeper may be even further eroded, providing even more grist to the mill of the organization’s critics.

Ever so often the toil of the conscientious journalist produces results which rattle the foundations of corrupt and twisted governance.

On August 8 this year, a cane farmer died in an accident on the Zorg-en-Vlygt Public Road in Essequibo; on August 12, a mother died in an accident involving a minibus and a car on the Lima Public Road and the two drivers died subsequently; on August 13 a six-year-old boy was killed by a minibus which was allegedly speeding near the Plaza bridge in Georgetown; on the same day a labourer riding his bicycle was killed by a car which was allegedly speeding on the No 53 road; on August 20, a man died following a crash involving two vehicles at Land of Canaan; on August 25 a motor cyclist was killed in an accident with a car at Conversation Tree; on August 26 a man was killed in a hit-and-run on the No 10 road, West Coast Berbice; on August 26 too, on the Bath Public Road a man was killed by an out-of-control truck which was allegedly speeding; on August 27 a former soldier died after being hit first by a car, and then being run over by a lorry when about to cross the road; again on August 27 a cyclist was killed on the Good Hope road in a hit-and-run; and on August 28 a man was killed in an accident at Saffon Street, La Penitence.

In the mid-1990s, when former US presidential candidate Bob Dole made a television commercial for Viagra, gravely recounting his bout with prostate cancer and the difficulty of post-operative complications like erectile dysfunction, many Americans were nonplussed.

It is difficult to understand, from a distance, what exactly is going on with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her People’s Partnership (PP) government in neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago.

Amid the stench of shame engulfing this country in the wake of government’s admission in this Education Month that it had been and intended to continue indulging in the theft of intellectual property, there came a ray of hope in the constancy of the Guyana Book Foundation (GBF), which recently began its annual distribution of supplementary reading books and teachers’ resource materials to hinterland schools.

The drama of anti-American demonstrations in the Middle East, Pakistan in Asia, North Africa and other parts of the world in the period just prior to the November elections in the United States, is obviously not the best background for President Barack Obama to be bringing his campaign to a climax.

High-profile personages including politicians are, as a general rule,  better positioned than run of the mill citizens to ‘make’ news, that advantage arising out of an entirely reasonable assumption that their pronouncements and actions will be of greater national import and therefore more newsworthy.

Without a doubt, the following rhetorical question by the Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Luncheon at a press conference on September 12 will go down in the record of this government as the clearest self-admission of the criminalization of the state.

The authorities do not have much of a record in terms of catching major drug barons or having an impact on local narco-trafficking activities, but my goodness, their ability to draft National Drug Strategy Master Plans is nothing short of sensational.

A week used to be a long time in politics. In our day rival campaigns fight each other one news cycle at a time, constantly looking to wrong-foot the other side and force them into damage control.

The Venezuelan elections on October 7 may well prove to be the most momentous in Venezuela’s recent history, with hugely important implications for the Latin American and Caribbean region as well.

Before Monday night, Bibi Samaroo was just another resident of the sprawling, new housing development at Diamond, East Bank Demerara.

The murder of the United States Ambassador and three colleagues in Libya, followed by demonstrations in other countries of the Middle East, indicate that the cauldron is still boiling in that part of the world, as it certainly continues to do in Syria.

Acting Police Commissioner Leroy Brumell’s engagements on Thursday with family members of the slain teenager Shaquille Grant and with residents of Agricola who had protested the young man’s killing by police might be interpreted as an attempt by the Guyana Police Force (GPF) to strike a more conciliatory posture than it usually does in response to public protests over police killings.

The death of any 17-year-old is difficult to fathom much more one at the hands of the police in what was clearly reckless behaviour.