The smell of tear smoke discharged by the police at villagers demonstrating against poor security; the sound of ministers of the government being abused by members of the public; the sight of a bulldozer stuck in the soft mud in the village backlands; the shambles of a minister’s meeting with irate farmers; and the scene in the National Assembly of a cabinet minister intemperately remonstrating with the speaker will, sadly, remain some of the tragi-comical memories of what has now become a month of mourning for this country.
That the word conscription has been uttered by President Jagdeo is the clearest evidence yet of how far the Lusignan massacre has pushed the decision makers of the country.
In an opinion piece in Stabroek News on February 1, Dr Norman Girvan observed that Dominica’s accession to the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, as it is known, was by no means the first time that a Caricom member state had acted at variance with its regional commitments.
Last week in Cuba, in a government-sponsored debate that touched mainly on social issues, but which was really very political, given the nature of the Cuban system, the Culture Minister, Abel Prieto, took the lead in voicing criticism of some of the controls imposed by the Communist regime.
A month before he was caught, the trader Jerome Kerviel worried that his supervisors at Societe Generale would uncover a secret profit of one and a half billion euros which he had made in fraudulent trades.
At the time of the submission of the report of the commission of inquiry into the alleged involvement of former Minister of Home Affairs Mr Ronald Gajraj in extra-judicial killings in May 2005, President Bharrat Jagdeo mooted the notion of having a “mother of all inquiry” [sic] into this country’s bloody history of civil violence.
The US presidential race has reached a juncture that is as fascinating as it was unpredictable.
It goes without saying that there is a need for the government and the Joint Services to be supported across the board as they try to deal with the crisis brutally carved by the fusillade of the Lusignan killers.
The aftermath of Lusignan has exposed beyond all doubt that the administration really has no answers to the entrenched problems of this society, which is not to say that it is now prepared to entertain ideas from any other quarter.
Not surprisingly, the much-hyped compensation meeting between the government and the Buxton backland farmers degenerated into chaos over Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud’s choice of words.
US President Harry Truman famously had a plaque on his desk that said “The Buck Stops Here” and he meant it.
Last week the Toronto District School Board decided to approve a new school in which the “knowledge and experiences of peoples of African descent [will be] an integral feature of the teaching and learning environment.”
The Caricom-EU Economic Partnership Agree-ment negotiations have come to a de facto end, though not without a certain amount of disputation in the Region about its potential advantages and disadvantages.
While the two-and-a-half-year trial of Mr Omprakash ‘Buddy’ Shivraj plodded on ever so ponderously before magistrate Priya Sewnarine-Beharry at the Providence court, it was surprising to learn that the chief witness, Mr Joseph O’Lall, had been removed from his post as chief executive officer of the Guyana Energy Agency with effect from December 31 2007.
There will come a period soon when the turmoil and outrage over the massacre of the Lusignan 11 (L-11) will no longer be a cacophony, when a shadow of normality will descend on the lives of all of the aggrieved and when the heat on the government and the security forces would have dissipated.
Even as more and more people eschew the radio for the visual immediacy of television and the interactive, multimedia experience of the Internet, Tuesday, February 1, 2011 was quite an interesting day to be listening to the BBC World Service.
Despite all that has happened since February 23, 2002, this is the first time that the residents of the lower East Coast have confronted the administration in anger.
As with everything else in Guyana, the crime situation just had to get totally out of control and people had to protest before there was any obvious sign that efforts were being made to deal with it.
Dominica’s announced decision to sign on to ALBA-the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas-has been the subject of some media comment because of its supposed undermining of Caricom.
None but the most inhuman would be unmoved by the slaughter of innocent villagers at Lusignan on bloody Saturday.
