Editorial

Last week protesters from APNU demonstrated outside of the premises of the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission, Dr Steve Surujbally and Chief Election Officer, Mr Gocool Boodoo.

Suspicion is the curse of this country. There are historical reasons for it, of course, which hardly need any elaboration, but in terms of its consequences it produces all kinds of irrationalities.

As the UN Climate Change talks in South Africa ended, one country emerged as an unexpected leader in the transition to green technology – the People’s Republic of China.

President Donald Ramotar would be forgiven for thinking that his term at the head of a minority government has not got off to the most auspicious of beginnings, with some worrying signs in the immediate aftermath of the elections.

A president chooses his own cabinet, or at least he should.

Coinciding closely with the elections in Guyana and just before the forthcoming ones in Jamaica on December 29, general elections were concluded in St Lucia on November 28, with the opposition St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) displacing the former Prime Minister Sir John Compton’s United Workers Party (UWP) with an 11-6 majority in the country’s House of Assembly.

Each time that national and regional elections are held in Guyana the spotlight falls on the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom).

No matter the depth and breadth of recrimination among the parties that preceded the November 28, 2011 general election, its sobering results offer the rudiments for a transformation of the present adversarial and enervating political environment.

The people have spoken. But as always in these circumstances why they said what they said is not necessarily a subject on which there is unanimity.

At first glance the 149-day lockout that has derailed this year’s NBA season seems remote from the concerns of the wider world.

At a time when cynicism about the motives of politicians in general abounds in Guyana, it would perhaps come as no surprise that the credibility of politicians in other parts of the region is also being seriously questioned.

Today is World AIDS Day around the world and it is being commemorated under the theme ‘Getting to Zero: Zero New HIV Infections.

As the Eurozone crisis has continued, an interesting development has been the interest of the so-called emerging economic powers of what has hitherto been called the Third World in a positive outcome, and hints of a willingness to help achieve that, given appropriate conditions.

It took exactly seven months, from his first announcement on April 23 that he would step down, to the eventual signing of the agreement on November 23, for Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh to finally bring his thirty three-year grip on power – first, as President of the then North Yemen since 1978 and from 1991 as President of a unified Yemen – to an end.

Today, we repeat some of the appeals we had made in our August 28, 2006 polling day editorial.

There was a curious development on Thursday, when the cabinet announced that tomorrow would be a public holiday.

Embattled protests at Tahrir Square and, despite severe repression, tenacious opposition movements in Yemen and Syria indicate that the Arab Spring is far from over.

November 18 marked the 33rd anniversary of the Jonestown murder-suicide that took the lives of some 909 Americans, members of the People’s Temple of Jim Jones, at their sanctuary near Port Kaituma.

Getting into central Georgetown in daylight hours can tax the nerves of even someone with a steel will.

Hopes in the wider world that Egypt would have settled down, and be on the way to settling a new constitutional system after the overthrow last February of President Mubarak’s quasi-military regime, have been dashed by the widespread rioting commencing last week.