Editorial

Some of those who cluster round the table in the Cabinet room today are the same people who entered it for the first time in 1992.

On November 11, while millions of Europeans and North Americans bought poppies and gathered at the tombs of various unknown soldiers, during a quiet ceremony on Carifesta Avenue, the President of the Guyana Legion, Hector Bunyan, gave a dismaying account of the poverty which afflicts many local veterans.

Major General Henry Rangel, Chief of the Strategic Operational Command of the Venezuelan army, declared last week in an interview with the daily newspaper, Ultimas Noticias, that the army was “married” to President Hugo Chávez’s political project and that if the opposition won the 2012 elections, the army would not accept such a result.

Recent revelations about the Georgetown Public Hospital’s (GPH) ‘miracle’ doctor – Dr Vishwamintra Persaud – and the hospital’s management’s unswerving defence of what is quite clearly defenceless, has serious implications for the GPH’s continued credibility and could very well put its reputation at risk.

Over the last few weeks four events have occurred in our hemisphere that have been the subject of widespread comment over the hemisphere as a whole.

In what may well have been her first public pronouncement since her recent appointment, the new United States Ambassador to Jamaica Pamela Bridgewater has declared her intention to set her face against corruption during her diplomatic tenure on the island.

Amid concerns about Tropical Storm Tomas, a Stabroek News reporter journeyed two Fridays ago to the north west to report on any fallout from the outer bands of this ominous system.

Last Wednesday, parents effectively shut down Golden Grove Primary on the East Coast as well as Bagotville Primary on the West Bank over lack of water in the schools, among other things.

Twenty years ago, humiliated by the landslide election of Aung San Suu Kyi, the military junta in Burma ignored the poll, placed the newly elected leader under house arrest and decided to play a waiting game with the international community.

Just a couple of months ago, a group of individuals called the Sir Frank Worrell Memorial Committee, held an event in Trinidad, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Frank Worrell becoming the first long-term black captain of the West Indies cricket team.

There is an old saying that, ‘behind every successful man, there is a woman,’ which traditionally has meant that successful men owe their achievements in life to their wives, partners and/or mothers who supported and encouraged them in reaching the heights which they attained.

Last week we made some comments on Prime Minister Kamal Persad Bissessar’s initial response to requests for assistance first from St Vincent and the Grenadines, and then from St Lucia in the face of  Hurricane Tomas’ onslaught.

An official enquiry into the Neesa Gopaul tragedy was clearly very necessary.

So the proverbial cat is out of the bag. The government lulled the country into believing that a landmark, revamped Amerindian Act had been in force since 2006.

The details surrounding the murder of Neesa Gopaul were so harrowing and caused such a public outcry, that the authorities were under enormous pressure to punish officials who may have been derelict in their duties in respect of the teenager. 

With the carnage of the recent midterm elections safely behind them, what remains of the American left has begun to reflect on its losses.

Following the death and destruction wrought by the passage of tropical storm Tomas across Barbados, St Vincent and St Lucia, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has aroused a storm of a different sort with a comment that has been interpreted by the local media, opposition parliamentarians and the general public to mean that there will be no help for countries seeking assistance without benefits to Trinidad and Tobago.

Following a spate of maternal deaths at hospitals around the country, 19-year-old Shinnel George a first-time mother of West Demerara was also very nearly another statistic.

When in 1972, President Richard Nixon visited Mao Tse Tung in China, this visit to the People’s Republic, executed in deep secrecy, signalled to the rest of the world, and in particular America’s major partners, that the United States had recognized a force in the world that would not permit its exclusion from global affairs.

In a reply to Mr Sherwood Lowe’s remark in a letter that the PNCR has an uphill battle to motivate its supporters who do not believe that Gecom can deliver a fair election, the Public Relations Officer of the elections body rattled off an impressive list of accomplishments in a letter in the last Sunday Stabroek entitled ‘Gecom can deliver a fair election and it is impossible to believe that anyone should think otherwise.’