Editorial

The authorities have been tiptoeing around the Sangeeta Persaud issue as if they expected a bomb to be detonated underneath them at any moment.

After some four inches of rainfall between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, Georgetown was swamped – yet again.

To the surprise of many, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning has called a snap election.

It would appear that child abuse has different definitions depending on where you live in the world.

Almost two decades since the effective collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, the United States and  Russia, now much reduced in physical size and geopolitical outreach, have signed an agreement designed to continue their original pursuit, first agreed between President Reagan and President  Gorbachev in December 1987, of a persistent reduction of nuclear weapons.

The nexus between narco-trafficking and murders is unquestionable. In certain cases, according to comments made to this newspaper by Head of the Police Criminal Investigation Department Assistant Commissioner Seelall Persaud, some ‘execution-murders’ have been “drug-related.”

On Thursday evening as he pondered his problems under a shed near his Mon Repos business place, a gunman walked up to 41-year-old Rajendra Sonilal and mercilessly pumped four bullets into him.

While press releases flutter down about one or another aspect of the tourist industry from time to time, one is still left to wonder whether there is any coherent, integrated policy in relation to it.

The World’s Most Dangerous Place for Women, a BBC documentary, recently followed a 23-year-old Congolese girl returning home to parents who had sent her away as a baby to live in the safety of the United Kingdom.

On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, formally confirmed what had hitherto been the UK’s worst kept secret: that the country would be going to the polls on May 6.

Every day persons consciously take the decision to drink copious amounts of alcohol and then get behind the wheels of vehicles.

In what must be an unprecedented decision in our region, the High Court of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court system has, one year after the general elections in Antigua and Barbuda, declared the results in three seats held by the government party invalid, including that of the Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer.

It was predictable that the US Department of State’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report released on March 1, would be critical of the Government of Guyana’s counter-narcotics performance during 2009.

When a life like Sangeeta Persaud’s is lost so tragically to the country, the humdrum dilemmas of every-day life and the posturing of politicians seem so irrelevant and meaningless.

If an award existed for the most unmitigated drivel uttered by a member of Cabinet this year, then Education Minister Shaik Baksh would have won it hands down last week.

Minister of Education Shaik Baksh bluntly declared this week that his ministry will not tolerate violent students in school.

Unexpected as the recent round of diplomatic turmoil in the Middle East, caused by Israel’s recent actions in Jerusalem may have seemed even to the United States, they cannot be said to be entirely surprising.

Mid-March will be remembered for its murders. A Brazilian miner was shot dead after he was robbed of raw gold by armed bandits at his mining camp at Black Water in the Cuyuni-Mazaruni.

Friday’s opening of the revamped lock-ups at the Brickdam Police Station represents a small victory of sorts for the various groups that have lobbied for years for the bringing of this facility into conformity with basic norms of decency and respect for human rights.

Anyone who read our reports on the Georgetown Zoo should have been disturbed by their content.