Editorial

Walk into most supermarkets in America and you can pick up 10lbs of chicken leg quarters for about $8.00 or 80 cents per lb.

Barring politics there can be no subject which generates more letters to the editor than that of noise nuisance.

At a news conference on Friday, April 29, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo enunciated what he said was the government’s proposal to sanitise Guyana’s National Register of Registrants, from which the list of electors or voters’ list is derived every five years, and what has long been a bone of contention in quite possibly every national election held in this country to date.

Popularity an accident Riches take wings Those who cheer today will curse tomorrow Only one thing endures – character” – Horace Greeley, founder and publisher of the New York Tribune, on his deathbed (1872) Last Friday afternoon at Southwark Crown Court in London, England, Judge Deborah Taylor sentenced Boris Becker to two and a half years in jail for breaching UK insolvency laws.

Last weekend’s UncappeD event at the National Stadium blew a breath of fresh air across a section of the country’s entrepreneurial landscape that had been blighted by the Covid-19 pandemic for the preceding two years.

A United Nations report of April 26 has called for urgent action to avert a “sand crisis,” including a ban on beach extraction as demand rockets to 50 billion tonnes a year, according to Reuters.

Eight years after the submission of a petition by the villagers of Isseneru and the Amerindian Peoples Association with regard to the violation of that community’s human rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has found in their favour.

Any Guyanese who has filled out a visa application form for the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or the European Union (Schengen countries) will quickly come to the conclusion that the process is deliberately made costly and complex in order to make it a deterrent to travel.

Unesco’s World Press Freedom Day is to be celebrated here on May 3 and 4.

On April 19, Minister of Home Affairs Robeson Benn and Commissioner of Police (ag) Clifton Hicken held a meeting with more than 100 policewomen from various divisions at the Offi-cers’ Training Centre, Camp Road, Georgetown, where domestic and gender-based violence was among the subjects addressed.

On 5th April, Wang Yu, the iconic martial arts movie star passed away in Taipei, Taiwan, after a prolonged illness.

It would be by no means surprising if the populace, by now, has given up altogether on the likelihood of our arrival at a juncture, any time soon, when elected government and political opposition, both of which have constitutionally designated roles to play in the governance process, will understand that it is not a matter of whether or not, given their diametrically opposed political positions, they would probably prefer not to have to sit down with each other, but rather, a matter of their obligation, at intervals, to do so.

On Saturday, the government announced the first lift of one million barrels of oil from the second producing platform in the Atlantic – the Liza Unity – and it is expected that the price to be received will be in the vicinity of US$106 per barrel which would make it the highest take yet for the country since production started in 2019.

Mr Aubrey Norton comes to the leadership of the opposition as far as the public is concerned without the level of experience which would suggest either impressive negotiating skills or a personality disposed to restraint in political affairs.

Free and fair elections do not guarantee a democratic government. They are weddings; it is the marriage that counts.

In a recent column in this newspaper former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran drew attention to three major projects which had been financed by China’s Exim Bank and which he described as having failed.

Scientists do not usually protest. In fact, the two words – scientist and protest – have rarely appeared in the same sentence.

Loyalty can be viewed as one of the major contributing elements which hold together friendships, marriages, families, clans, organisations, societies, nations and regions in difficult times.

A professional Police Force can only be said to be discharging its responsibilities when it is perceived by the citizenry, as a whole, to be functioning  in a manner that is even-handed, without prejudice, unshackled by the taint of corruption and perhaps above everything else, when it is free of the restraints of political direction. 

In these columns, we have lamented previously that in relation to the oil and gas industry and particularly in its regulation, the government has conducted itself as if it was one of the partners of ExxonMobil in the Stabroek Block rather than operating as the custodian of all of the interests of the country and its people and the upholder of relevant laws.