Editorial

There might have been a time when people in the Caribbean viewed Alzheimer’s disease and other age-onset dementias as problems associated only with North America and Europe, simply because these are the continents where they have been recognised for what they are for years.

Controversy and differing interpretations continue to follow Fidel Castro’s statement that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for Cuba any more,” with experts trying hard to read the tea leaves in the still intensely closed political system of that country.

Senior officers of the Guyana Police Force seem to make their strongest statements about the virulence of the illegal narcotics trade only after some tragedy has occurred.

Chief Justice (ag) Chang’s ruling that Clico (Guyana) be wound up will bring immeasurable and welcome relief to hundreds of hard-working Guyanese who had health and other insurance policies with the company and had been lured by unrealistic rates to invest in a business whose parent was spinning Ponzi-like schemes.

It is not often that cases of Amerindian exploitation come to public attention through the media, which is not the same thing as to say that they are a rare occurrence, because one has every reason to believe they are not.

South Africa’s Big Brother reality show became notorious this week when it broadcast a quarrel inside the house that ended with one of the male contestants punching a female.

Following Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba in January 1998, there was a joke that summed up the issue of different perspectives vis-à-vis Fidel Castro.

Two months after they had been left to fend for themselves, seven children between the ages of 15 months and 14 years were taken into the custody of the Linden branch on the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security’s Child Care and Protection Unit.

Perhaps the most immediate issue in the minds of Caribbean policy-makers and commercial interests on the eve of last May’s general elections was the effect of an Air Passenger Duty (APD) or tax which the then Labour government proposed to introduce on persons leaving Britain for other destinations.

Commissioner of Police Mr Henry Greene reported last week that there had been 96 murders this year so far compared with 77 murders for a similar period – about 250 days – last year.

Taken all together, the drive-by shooting in Cummings Lodge that claimed five lives, the gruesome murders of two gold dealers in Bartica, the spate of killings in the interior and the innumerable armed robberies represent a crime flood in the affairs of the state.

No one could say that Minister Kellawan Lall does not contribute a bit of theatre to an otherwise drab Cabinet.

Nine years after The Day That Changed Everything, two controversies which have dominated recent political conversation in the United States are an unsettling reminder of how quickly, even in a mature and well-informed democracy, rational debate can be overwhelmed by provocative gestures and remarks. 

The Airtel Champions League Twenty20 begins today in South Africa and all Guyanese will want our T20 team, the underdogs of the tournament, to do us proud.

The Dove World Outreach Center had hovered on the brink of obscurity in Gainesville, Florida since its founding in 1986.

During the last fortnight, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent & the Grenadines has circulated what many might have found a curious document to be emanating from a Prime Minister’s office, and certainly one more reminiscent of the days of intense ideological confrontation of the mid-1970s into the 1980s.

The announcement of Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon last February that the administration was constructing a building to be used as an intelligence unit in the compound of Castellani House on Vlissengen Road sparked a controversy.

There will be little disputing that President Jagdeo’s descent on Buxton represented one of the most undisguised acts of political opportunism in recent times.

It is customary in the run-up to a general election for politicians to campaign on the record of a sitting government – either for or against.

Last Saturday, a contributor to our letter columns mentioned the “social fabric of our society.”