Editorial

On June 19 the European Union, at the urging of Spain, which has significant economic interests in Cuba, voted unanimously to lift the diplomatic sanctions it had imposed on Cuba five years ago.

Last weekend in Jerusalem the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) announced its intention to distance itself from the “militant secularism and pluralism” that has made sections of the church “compromised and enfeebled in their witness.” 

In one of what must be a record number of Heads of Government meetings in a half a year, our heads of government meet again this week in their regularly scheduled formal annual meeting, and it seems that they certainly have a lot of talking to each other to do, and some talking to do to us, the citizens of Caricom.

Long before the Lusignan, Bartica and Lindo Creek massacres, the Government Information Agency in September 2007 had reported Lieutenant Colonel Jawahar Persaud of the Guyana Defence Force as expressing satisfaction with the maturity with which the Joint Services had been able to coordinate their operations.

Regardless of who the Camp Lindo murders point to there is one stark and accusing fact that will haunt the government, law enforcement and all of society.

Last Saturday Mr Leonard Arokium emerged from the jungle with a horrific tale to tell: all eight of his men – two of whom were close relatives – had been killed in the most brutal fashion and their bodies burnt at his mining camp in Lindo Creek.

One week before it released its 2008 World Drug Report on Thursday to coincide with International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a press release culled from the information that fed into the report on drugs and crime in Central America and the Caribbean.

Born in Barbados to a Guyanese father (economist, Dr Vishnu Persaud) and a Trinidadian mother (novelist, Lakshmi Persaud), educated in the United Kingdom, where he has distinguished himself as a practising psychiatrist, academic and media star, Dr Raj Persaud has achieved more than most of us could ever dream of attaining in his 45 years.

Anyone who has followed the vicissitudes of democracy in the developing world will find the chaos surrounding Zimbabwe’s latest elections all too familiar.

The visit of a Taiwanese delegation to Beijing over the last fortnight suggests a determination of both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the new government of Taiwan to begin a process of normalization of relations – though without an as yet clear indication as to what form this will eventually take.

After nearly a decade of dangerous descent into disorder, drug-gang warfare and criminal violence, has Guyana started to move back onto the high road to public safety, security and stability?

When he berated businessman Yesu Persaud at the launching of the Guyana Times on the question of tax concessions for QAII, President Jagdeo argued that the assigning of these concessions was rule-based and according to law.

While the police have clearly made some progress in dealing with Rondell Rawlins’s gang, the public is nevertheless puzzled as to why, in the first instance, most of the members had been able to escape during the Christmas Falls operation.

On 23rd May, with an eye already on the battle with John McCain for the world’s most prestigious political prize, Senator Barack Obama, the then presumptive presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, told the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) in Miami that he would maintain the 45-year-old US economic embargo against Cuba.

Eighty years ago, in a fascinating study of play in human culture, the Dutch historian Johann Huizinga noted that in many ways “there is no distinction whatever between marking out a space for sacred purpose and marking it out for purposes of sheer play.

It really was highly unlikely that President Robert Mugabe, having conducted himself in the way that he has been doing for so long – before, during and after the last elections in the Republic – would suddenly have turned the face of generosity to Mr Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDCs).

Few security topics have been more discussed over the past decade than narcotics trafficking.

It is becoming impossible for the government to plausibly resist a comprehensive, independent inquiry of the death squad phenomena and the violence that gripped the East Coast following the 2002 prison-break.

Some time ago a correspondent to this newspaper suggested a fund-raising campaign to provide Guyana with a world class track and stadium.

This week, the government through the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security launched a National Policy on Domestic Violence, the purpose of which it says is to inform and guide future interventions for the prevention of domestic violence and the provision of services to survivors.