Editorial

Discussion seems to be growing in Trinidad & Tobago about what is perceived as an unwelcome degree of instability in decision-making in Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s People’s Partnership Government.

At the risk, perhaps, of provoking yet another of Mr. Khurshid Sattaur’s now familiar tirades against the Stabroek News, we again enquire into the status of his promised enquiry into the Vega Azurit cocaine trafficking incident made more than a month ago.

What exactly political advisors to the President do is a bit of a mystery – at least in this country.

No one would have noticed, but April 18 was the International Day for Monuments and Sites.

Nothing has been seen or heard of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei since his detention at Beijing Airport early this month for unspecified “economic crimes.”

For many it would probably have been one great yawn but this morning would also have found many Guyanese and West Indians, probably older rather than younger, glued to their television screens, watching the nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

According to World Bank estimates more than $1 trillion are paid in bribes each year out of an annual world economy of $30 trillion.

Hopes that the presidential and parliamentary elections in the Federal Republic of Nigeria would have passed off relatively peacefully, were dashed almost immediately after the announcement of the results in favour of incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Few people who are familiar with the Guyanese political culture would have attached any substantive significance to the recent announcement that Messrs.

A report by the Times of India earlier this month that an Indian company, Vaitarna Holdings, controlled 1.82M acres of Guyanese forest deservedly captured media scrutiny here.

In our editorial of Monday, March 14, we had drawn attention to the fact that the Education Television Broadcasting Service was being set up in breach of the understanding reached during the dialogue between President Jagdeo and the late Mr Hoyte, and the continuation of that dialogue with the latter’s successor, Mr Robert Corbin.

Cuba’s Communist Party inaugurated its first Congress in 14 years on April 16, exactly 50 years since Fidel Castro confirmed his embrace of socialism, the adoption of a centralised Soviet-style economy and one-party rule.

At a symposium to mark the International Year of Forests earlier this week at the International Convention Centre, Liliendaal, President Bharrat Jagdeo boasted that Guyana has led the way in developing what he called the “economics of trees”, referring of course to the Low Carbon Development Strategy and its potential for raking in big bucks for the preservation of trees to be used in the country’s development.

Recent signings by the European Union of trade and economic agreements with countries in the Hemisphere, including the states of Central America in our Caribbean Basin, indicate the EU’s continuing determination to extend their formal frameworks of economic relations beyond the recently independent states of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Access to the state media by political parties never fails to become a major political issue during the campaign period preceding general elections in Guyana.

It is ironic in many ways that need not be elaborated that Surinamese President Desi Bouterse last week admonished his police force not to behave like “Hitler’s Gestapo” and warning that those responsible for barbaric actions can expect severe sanctions.

If the story of the government’s relations with the city council were to be made into a movie, no one would watch it because the plot would be so convoluted, so repetitious and so wearisome that it would be impossible to sustain the viewer’s interest beyond the first five minutes.

“You wouldn’t let your grandparents choose who you date,” says the advertisement, “Then why let them choose your government?”

Beyond the diplomatic rapprochement sealed by the summit meeting between Colombia’s new President, Juan Manuel Santos, and President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela last weekend in the Colombian city of Cartagena de Indias, there were signs that another festering sore in Latin American relations might soon be healed.

It was supposed to be the answer to the city’s garbage woes, foremost of which was the expired Le Repentir landfill that had so long polluted the lives of so many.