Editorial

On Monday, a nine-year-old boy was found dead on his parents’ poultry farm in a remote Berbice village.

An account of the collapse of the Soviet Union relates that, “In December 1991, as the world watched in amazement, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen countries.”

Last Thursday morning sections of Georgetown were submerged beneath the steady downpour of the previous night and into the following morning. 

It has become a recurring theme in these columns for the poor conditions of schools throughout the country to be highlighted in the expectation that urgent action would be taken.

A close-up of Hosni Mubarak shown on the CNN website revealed an utterly cynical face.

As creeping democratization takes hold in the Middle East, some curious Westerners  have combed through the region’s literature for clues to the turbulence.

Two eminent Guyanese economists, Dr Havelock Brewster and Prof Clive Thomas, are perhaps most famous in integrationist circles for their seminal 1967 work, The Dynamics of West Indian Economic Integration, the centrepiece of a series on regional economic integration put out by the University of the West Indies.

Just over a week ago, totally in keeping with the intemperate behaviour that has come to characterise this current administration, Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy chose a public forum to angrily inform the representatives of international organizations based here that they had used wrong data which was not tabulated locally, and which “disrespected” the country and undermined the efforts of local health workers.

In recent weeks discussion has again arisen on the question, ‘Shall we have a CCJ or not?’

Parent protests over infrastructural deficiencies, health hazards and physically dangerous conditions in state schools – the latest of which occurred at the Philadelphia Primary School just last week – have become a common occurrence.

While to err is human, Minister Webster’s parliamentary howler in pricing the netbooks for the government’s one laptop per family (OLPF) programme betrays something else more fundamental.

Proceedings in our House of Assembly are usually fairly turgid, except when they are enlivened by the occasional witticism, such as when Minister Kellawan Lall rose to his feet to speak on Monday, and Ms Debbie Backer called out to her fellow parliamentarians, “Duck!”

About eight months ago, shortly before the general elections in the UK, The Independent, a daily newspaper in England relaunched with a new design and a banner at the top its front page which proclaims: “Free from party political bias / Free from Proprietorial Influence.”

Even as more and more people eschew the radio for the visual immediacy of television and the interactive, multimedia experience of the Internet, Tuesday, February 1, 2011 was quite an interesting day to be listening to the BBC World Service.

Last Saturday, in our weekly entertainment and culture eight-page supplement The Scene, we carried a report based on an interview with the reigning calypso monarch Mr Geoffrey Phillips – the Mighty Rebel – in which he said that he was foregoing defending his title this year and would not compete again because of what he described as “shabby treatment” meted out to him by the state controlled television station – National Communications Network (NCN).

A series of actions and events since its election to office in May of last year, seems to be giving the People’s Partnership government an aura of instability, or at least inconsistency, in its behaviour.

We may never know the truth behind the acid attack on Mr Pretipaul Jaigobin, the former Assistant Treasurer of the Guyana Cricket Board  in May last year.

Wherever public servants function, an indispensable part of the work they do relates to their interface with the public on issues of importance and interest.

Every autocrat in the Arab world must be shaking in his sandals.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in a combative mood this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, interrupting the usual backslapping with contrarian advice that was long overdue.