Editorial

As yet another week of power outages and low and high voltages begins to wind down, one cannot help but wonder how it is that we seem to not be able to get it right.

As then Senator Barack Obama campaigned for the American Presidency he seemed to understand well enough that the war in Iraq had become a millstone around President George Bush’s neck, in much the same way as, in the mid-1960’s an inherited war in Vietnam put Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s administration in jeopardy, eventually forcing the President to declare that he would not seek re-election.

Commissioner of Police Henry Greene admitted at the Guyana Police Force’s 170th anniversary awards ceremony last July that the rising rates of armed robbery with violence and robbery with aggravation continue to be “worrisome.”

Aside from all of the other ramifications, the sentencing of Mr Roger Khan in a New York court for conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States shines the spotlight brightly on the government’s stark failure to interdict and tear down the drug trade.

So finally Roger Khan has been sentenced in a New York federal court for drug smuggling, witness tampering and gun possession in Vermont.

Forty years ago, commenting on the contradictions of US foreign policy in Vietnam, Norman Mailer observed that “Bombing a country at the same time you are offering it aid is as morally repulsive as beating up a kid in an alley and stopping to ask for a kiss.”

Last Friday’s Regent Street fire was a grim reminder of the historic vulnerability of a huge section of our commercial capital to disaster.

It is a good thing that the Minister of Foreign Affairs has convened a conference for the heads of Guyana’s 13 diplomatic missions abroad.

As Guyana begins to take its first tottering steps towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) readiness, in its move to eventually implement a Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) international climate change negotiations are not going as well as they should.

The result of the referendum held in Ireland at the beginning of this month has signalled the virtual end to a long campaign in Europe to get the Treaty of Lisbon ratified by all 27 member-states of the European Union.

The wave of grave maritime incidents should have made at least three things clear to the administration.

The irony of the Home Affairs Minister and the fire chief standing proudly in front of gleaming fire-fighting units the day before a devastating fire raced through a section of Regent Street will not escape the attention of many.

The siren song of power is hard to resist. And it is particularly hard to resist for those who have been in office for some period of time.

Earlier this week, after pocketing a US$10 million bonus for winning the Fedex Cup, Tiger Woods became the first billionaire athlete in history, according to Forbes magazine.

There are signs that the steps taken by the Barack Obama administration to relax some restrictions on contact with Cuba and the initiation of quiet, diplomatic dialogue with the government of President Raúl Castro may hold hope for a better bilateral relationship between the United States of America and Cuba.

There are signs that the steps taken by the Barack Obama administration to relax some restrictions on contact with Cuba and the initiation of quiet, diplomatic dialogue with the government of President Raúl Castro may hold hope for a better bilateral relationship between the United States of America and Cuba.

Some years ago, there used to be a blind man begging on Regent Street.

Last week’s editorial on this theme focused on the meetings that took place among the traditional post-war powers and their partners among the emerging economic powers, leading significantly to a reconstitution of the G8 into a G20.

Justice Jainarayan Singh’s public complaint last week seemed to highlight much that has gone wrong with the criminal justice system, law enforcement and human rights in this country.

As we reported in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek, the Guyana Times which was launched in June last year is already receiving 19.5% of state advertisements through the Government Information Agency (GINA).