Editorial

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?

It is not often that the police get big breaks in sensational murder cases that allow them to make arrests, lay charges and present formidable evidence in the courts.

We have now entered Round Two with Suriname it seems. It should come as no surprise, given our neighbour’s history in relation to the border; as we all know from experience Suriname has only two strategies in its playbook − brute force and bullying.

In our editorial last week (‘Return of the Prince of Darkness’), we mentioned that the UK’s new Secretary of Business, Peter Mandelson – or Lord Mandelson as he is now known – was already attracting unwelcome attention for having been entertained on a Russian oligarch’s yacht in August, while still European Union Trade Commissioner.

Since the middle of last year, the US Congressional Budget Office estimates that Americans have lost almost two trillion dollars from their retirement plans.

In his speech to the general debate of the UN General Assembly last month, Prime Minister David Thompson of Barbados reminded his audience of the special interest which the governments of the Caribbean have had in the recognition of the vulnerability of small island developing states, and the variety of vulnerabilities of the Caribbean region as a whole.