Editorial

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.

Last Monday, President Obama signed The Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Reconstruction Act, landmark legislation which prepares the way for coordinated diplomatic, humanitarian and military initiatives to confront one of Africa’s most brutal insurgencies.

Kamla Persad-Bissessar has created history in Trinidad and Tobago by becoming the country’s first female prime minister.

Many of the shires (counties) in the UK have web portals which begin with the words ‘This is,’ and what they do is provide a wealth of information on the area.

Not too long ago the Government of Mexico was host to Latin American and Caribbean heads of states and governments at a meeting which resulted in agreement to establish a Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

The Guyana government’s record on human rights and public security collided with the reality of its international obligations and the vigilance of the developed democracies a fortnight ago in Geneva.

It is no secret that the Guyana Police Force has been hard-pressed to continuously prove to its critics that it is capable of rebuffing political interference in its work.

Infrastructural failures in this country have almost entered the realm of myth.

For those of us who live elsewhere, the frequency with which mature democracies make questionable, ambiguous or downright foolish choices can either  be read as an encouragement – that every country has  bouts of political myopia – or as proof that democracy teaches by trial and error and that mistakes are a necessary part of the electorate’s education.