Indications in the press this week that the Heads of Government will consider the issue of the relationship between the Caricom Secretariat and the Caricom Regional Negotiating Machinery, serve to remind us that since the deliberations and decisions of the Heads at their last Conference in July last year, nothing further has been heard on implementation of measures agreed for Caricom’s reorganization, based on the Report of the Technical Working Group (TWG) on Governance, Managing Mature Regionalism.
When he first addressed the United Nations General Assembly after the independence of Barba-dos, Prime Minister Errol Barrow indicated his recognition that the world’s powers tended to see small states as irritants.
Stalling the meaningful implementation of the National Drug Strategy Master Plan and skimping on cash for the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit while serenading the public with promises to be “tough on drug lords” have helped the administration to win for itself another adverse annual report for under-performance in its so-called war on illegal narcotics.
Stalling the meaningful implementation of the National Drug Strategy Master Plan and skimping on cash for the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit while serenading the public with promises to be “tough on drug lords” have helped the administration to win for itself another adverse annual report for under-performance in its so-called war on illegal narcotics.
Friday’s rebuke by the US of Guyana’s drug efforts will be hard for this government to lightly dismiss especially in the backdrop of the current UK-funded security sector reform programme which identifies the narcotics trade as a risk factor.
In our edition last Tuesday we carried a report saying that the photos of six men wanted by the police in connection with the Lusignan and Bartica killings had not been released by the police force to Stabroek News despite the fact that they had been carried in the February 23 edition of the Guyana Chronicle, as well as in the Kaieteur News the following day.
On Monday last, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a multi-year global campaign bringing together the United Nations, governments and civil society to try to end violence against women, calling it an issue that “cannot wait.”
A news item in the January 21 edition of Stabroek News referred to the damage that has been done and continues to be done to the seawall embankment along the Rupert Craig Highway by the large, unregulated Sunday gatherings.
Even though we live on the periphery of a rain forest, few Guyanese appreciate the economic potential of our hinterland.
The disturbingly distinctive characteristic of criminal violence in this country over the past six years has been the high incidence of massacres, or mass murders.
The administration’s agreement to establish a special select committee on the Disciplined Forces Commission Report in the National Assembly must have been an embarrassing admission of its sloth and weakness.
President Jagdeo’s declaration on Tuesday at Bartica that the same gang of men was responsible for the Lusignan massacre on January 26 and the February 17 slaughter in the township raises a troubling dilemma which neatly crystallizes the law and order crisis facing the country.
In the aftermath of the Lusignan killings, nothing which those elected to protect us had to say seemed to have much relevance to the issue.
What is a life worth, UNICEF asks in its State of the World’s Children 2008 report titled ‘Child Survival’ and released last month.
A couple of weeks ago, in South Korea, the Namdaemun Gate, a 600-year-old building in Seoul, was destroyed in a fire started by an arsonist.
It was very telling that on St Valentine’s Day, when love was supposedly in the air there was none in the National Assembly.
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.
