Editorial

On January 29, 2002, Chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales, Lord Daniel Brennan QC, told the Guyana media at a press briefing that he had recommended the Brickdam lockups be “locked up and closed.”

While the election of Senator Barack Obama does suggest that American politics has withstood the Bush years better than many had feared, his margin of victory in the popular vote – six percentage points – should give pause to anyone who believes radical change is coming to Washington any time soon.

Caribbean leaders, among them President Bharrat Jagdeo, Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Patrick Manning of Trinidad and Tobago and Baldwin Spencer of Antigua and Barbuda, have been voicing, with Barack Obama’s victory, their hope that the United States will change its policy towards Cuba.

Almost on the heels of its countrywide consultations, which sought and gained consensus for the ‘Stamp it Out’ campaign, the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security has plunged headlong into a series of forums guaranteed to bring about some amount of controversy because of the subject matter: divorce.

Our governments have hastened to congratulate President-elect Obama on his victory.

Another month, another meeting. Caricom’s Council for National Security and Law Enforcement, established only two years ago, has already chalked up seven meetings, the most recent being last week in Georgetown.

The police must be commended for the retrieval of the $17M GuySuCo payroll which was snatched on Thursday and the capture of some of the suspected perpetrators.

The government did not show itself to best advantage in the parliamentary debate a week last Monday, and Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud in particular did nothing to advance his political reputation.

When the history of this era is written our children’s grandchildren will look back in disgust at the endemic and barbarous violence of this period, especially that being meted out to women and girls, and wonder at what could have been wrong with their antecedents.

This past week seems to have been one of tears more than anything else: tears of grief and tears of jubilation.

It was not the successful presidential candidate mounting the stage in Grant Park, Chicago, to give his victory speech who provided the iconic image of US election night 2008, but rather the old civil rights campaigner, Jesse Jackson, who was filmed with tears coursing down his cheeks at the news of an Obama win.

Last week’s press conferences and debates in the National Assembly on the motion calling on the government “to establish an impartial and independent commission of inquiry to examine and investigate the allegations of torture made against the Joint Services of Guyana,” among other things, degenerated into a display of dissimulation.

As the American presidential race draws to a close and Senator Obama maintains a reasonable advantage over Senator McCain, speculation has begun in the Caribbean about the effect of an Obama presidency on Caribbean expectations of the United States.

As we here at Stabroek News mourn the loss of our beloved Editor-in-Chief, Mr David de Caires, a compassionate and tolerant man who fervently believed that the diversity of our society in all its forms had to be cherished and nurtured, it would be appropriate to address the chaos that attended Deepavali observances in Alexander Village on Tuesday.

It is not everyone who is able to find their vocation in life and by so doing make a real difference to the society in which they live, but such was the case with David de Caires, Editor-in-Chief of the Stabroek News who died yesterday in Barbados.

Two weeks ago the courts in Dubai sentenced  two Britons to three months in jail for having sex on a public beach.

As the momentum builds towards what many in our part of the world hope will be an Obama victory in next Tuesday’s US presidential election, it is all too easy to forget that it is unclear exactly how the Caribbean and Latin America will stand to gain under the new incumbent in the White House.

Despite the fact that many persons’ behaviour point to the contrary, the average human being is interested in longevity.

As the financial crisis has continued to grip the world economy in these last few months, the major powers have been meeting in various combinations – in the euro group, the wider EU group, the EU and the US, the Asians and the ASEAN group including China, and the NAFTA powers.

How many more persons must perish needlessly because of the tolerance that taints official attitudes towards the lawless traffic across the Corentyne River?