Editorial

The citation for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize – awarded simultaneously to the activists Leymah Gbowee (Liberia)  Tawakkul Karman (Yemen) and the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia – notes that  “[w]e cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society.”

Some six months after Michel Martelly was announced as the winner of Haiti’s presidential election, the country finally has a prime minister in the person of Dr Garry Conille, following his ratification by the Senate on Tuesday.

They are among some of the most undervalued people in this society.

Over the last three years the region has experienced now three unanticipated departures from political leadership, interestingly enough in the countries which we have designated in Caricom terms as the More Developed Countries.

Virtually overnight, the image of President Hugo Chávez has been transformed.

There is no doubt that the commentary which was presented by Mr Anthony Vieira on CNS Channel Six on May 4 this year and which has now been listed as the reason for the suspension of the licence of CNS Channel Six for four months contained scandalous allegations which no responsible broadcaster should permit without ensuring that there was some basis or evidence to sustain it. 

On September 6 this year, Guyana formally submitted her claim for an extended continental shelf of 150 nautical miles to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, pursuant to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Earlier this week, a series of remarkable statements by an American trader turned a routine segment of BBC television news into a compelling glimpse of the greed and fear that are commonly said to drive the world’s stock markets.

In a European Champions League football match on Tuesday, Manchester City’s Argentine forward, Carlos Tévez, refused manager Roberto Mancini’s call to come on as a substitute in the second half, with City 2-0 down to Bayern Munich.

In a report published in this newspaper yesterday about the lack of a cook at the Port Kaituma Secondary School, which is a boarding school, we quoted a single parent as saying that she might be forced to remove her 13-year-old daughter from the school if the situation continued, though she did not want to do so because the child was the first of her five children to attend secondary school.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s decision to leave the leadership of Jamaica is unexpected but not too difficult to appreciate.

Last week, a court in the United States sentenced  a retired Bolivian military officer, Rene Sanabria, to fourteen years in prison for masterminding a drug-trafficking network that exported cocaine manufactured in Bolivia to Miami.

On August 19 during a press conference where he baldly declared that GuySuCo did not have the expertise to run the troubled Skeldon factory, Agriculture Minister Mr Robert Persaud also made the statement that the board needed to hurry up with its consideration of proposals from an Indian and a Chinese company to manage the operations.

Yet another Education Month rolled around on September 1, with yet another new theme; this time, “Transforming Guyana through Science and Technology in Education.”

The state of Georgia executed Troy Davis, America’s most famous death row prisoner, earlier this week despite a widespread international campaign for clemency, and eleventh hour appeals from the Pope, former president Jimmy Carter and Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

A fortnight ago, we reported that the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in a study released last month, ‘Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy 2010-2011,‘ had called for “a new alliance” with the United States of America in order to facilitate the “better integration” of the region into the world economy.

On the evening of September 6, 15-year-old Renard ‘Rene’ Fernandes had gasoline poured on his body which was then set alight by a workmate on the fishing boat where he was working.

Nearly sixteen months since the People’s Partnership (PP) swept the polls in Trinidad & Tobago with a majority of 29 seats to 12 over the People‘s National Movement (PNM), there is still much discussion in the country as to whether Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s government has settled to smoothly running the country.

History is replete with bizarre examples of political ambition taken to unfathomable extremes.

Considering that he is widely believed to have commandeered a death squad that eliminated dozens of suspected criminals and rivals while reputedly aiding in the fight against crime, it is not suprising that Mr Roger Khan’s connections with the government and senior government officials have come under scrutiny.