Editorial

The sweeping victory of Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit’s Dominica Labour Party – 18 seats to 3 –  in the country’s December 18th general elections, represents a substantial vote of confidence in the party’s tenure of government.

Even as Police Commissioner Henry Greene was expressing satisfaction with this year’s performance and congratulating awardees at the Guyana Police Force’s annual Awards Ceremony last week, reports about police conduct continued to make the news.

Given the tortured electoral history of the country and the ease with which it could be spun into top gear, the rumblings about distorted images on the new ID cards being distributed by the Guyana Elections Commission were exceedingly worrying.

The latest strategic plan for the University of Guyana on which we reported last week, in its generality really doesn’t tell us anything which we didn’t know already and which earlier reports hadn’t also identified.

“Thousands have lived without love,” wrote the poet WH Auden, “not one without water.”

Tiny Dominica goes to the polls today, amid controversy over party campaign financing and allegations of dual citizenship against candidates of the two main parties, including Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, who has admitted to being a French citizen.

Almost three years after he boldly announced that all schools and other buildings which fall under the Ministry of Education would be no-smoking zones, Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy is still in a fog over tobacco control.

President Barack Obama’s speech on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize has been the subject of as much critical attention as was the award itself.

The Liliendaal Declaration on Crime Prevention published in this newspaper last Sunday is a magnificent statement of intent.

Earlier this year, just after the launching of the first draft of the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), the visiting Commonwealth Secretary-General Mr Kamalesh Sharma in an interview with this newspaper had perceptively spoken about the need for countries like Guyana to break out of the monocultural-type economy and to diversify their revenue streams.

On November 4, former Commissioner of Police Floyd McDonald, Assistant Commissioner Seelall Persaud and Head of CANU James Singh went bounding off to Caracas for a meeting of the Guyana-Venezuela Mixed Commission on Drugs.

Tiger Woods used to live in a world of his own.

It is a little ironic that just one week after the Commonwealth Business Forum in Trinidad, at which Caribbean prime ministers, government ministers, the Caricom Secretary General and various captains of industry were attempting to sell the region as a place to do business, the President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Professor Compton Bourne, was painting a less than rosy picture to the annual dinner of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI), on December 2.

The Office of Professional Responsibility of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) has discharged its mandate in a manner in keeping with its name.

There has been a continuing interest in the political and economic evolution of Cuba since the assumption of the presidency by General Raul Castro in July of 2006.

Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee’s ‘baptism of fire’ occurred when he was sworn into his present portfolio in September 2006.

On August 11, the families of Jainarine Dinanauth, Henry Gibson and Ricky Jainarine were thrown into unending turmoil and grief after what seemed to be an accident in the Essequibo River.

“…when you finish writing your memoir I would like to read it,” said US Judge Raymond Dearie to David Clarke prior to sentencing him.

Here are two scenarios which will play out with small variations a thousand times across the country today.

Guyana is not, strictly speaking, a banana republic. Yes, we have had our fair share of authoritarian rule, electoral fraud, plantation economics and endemic corruption, but we have been spared the anarchy, bloodshed and political instability of coups d’état and revolutionary movements.