Editorial

We are one week into the World Cup and the quality of the football in the preliminary, cautious skirmishes of the group stage has been, frankly, underwhelming.

The findings of recently concluded research in the United States revealed that a murder in the neighbourhood significantly lowered a child’s score on an IQ test and that the effects lasted for about a week to nine days.

The communiqué issued after the meeting last week between our heads of state and government and the American Secretary of State was entitled ‘Commitment of Bridgetown: Partnership for Prosperity and Security.’

Once could be chance. Twice might be coincidence. Thrice, however, seems a lot like a campaign.

Try as it may, the Government of Guyana has failed to convince critics and skeptics that the company selected to build the road for the Amaila Falls Hydro Project, Synergy Holdings Inc, was properly qualified to be chosen and has the wherewithal to deliver the job.

The inevitable has happened: the fourth round of sanctions to be imposed on Iran has been agreed by the Security Council.

Although no West Indian teams have made it to the finals, there are good reasons to believe that the upcoming FIFA World Cup, Africa’s first, might well be one of the best.

Last Monday, the Israeli navy shot and killed four Palestinians wearing diving gear, who Israeli officials said were planning a terrorist attack off the Gaza coast.

Sixteen-year-old Kelvin Fraser was killed on Monday when the shot from a policeman’s gun entered his body, perhaps damaging vital organs or severing a major artery.

At the beginning of this week, the new British Prime Minister, David Cameron warned the British people that they are likely to undergo a long period of austerity, his government’s survey of the economy producing a conclusion that the country’s financial situation was “even worse than we thought.” 

Only six weeks after United States Secretary of Defense Dr Robert Gates visited Barbados on  April 16 to launch the ‘Caribbean Basin Security Initiative,’ US Attorney General Eric Holder convened a one-day ‘Dialogue’ in Washington, DC on May 27 to launch the ‘Caribbean-United States Security Cooperation Initiative.’

As cricket is the premier sport of the land it follows that there are thousands of nominal stakeholders in the business of the Guyana Cricket Board by virtue of their patronage of, and abiding interest in its offerings.

If there were a crime of cultural malfeasance on the statute books, then Minister Leslie Ramsammy would surely have been charged with it by now, along, perhaps, with Dr Bheri Ramsarran as an accessory.

Nearly 50 days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught fire and sank, it is becoming clear that the scale of the crisis was underestimated from the beginning.

Last Friday, we observed that Kamla Persad-Bissessar had created history in Trinidad and Tobago by becoming the country’s first female prime minister.

Late last month, as preparations for the observance of World No Tobacco Day heightened, the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper ran a feature—complete with photographs—on a two-year-old Indonesian boy, who smokes 40 cigarettes a day.

The return of the United National Congress, as the core of the People’s Partnership (PP) coalition, to power in Trinidad and Tobago must naturally give rise to the question of the extent of continuity that there is likely to be in the country’s relationships and policies towards first, the Caricom sub-region itself and then to the wider Caribbean Basin and Latin American arenas.

The results of last Tuesday’s elections in Suriname have provoked predictable reactions from interested parties.

There could hardly have been a more searing critique of the protagonists in the continuing and demoralizing decline of West Indian cricket than that issued by the Chief Executive Officer of the West Indies Cricket Board, Mr Ernest Hilaire.

Last week was not a good week for freedom of expression in this country.