Editorial

Roundabouts have been around for about 250 years. An early version is Paris’ La Place D’Etoile (renamed Place Charles de Gaulle) built in 1777 where up to ten lanes of traffic encircle the Arc de Triomphe.

On Sunday we reported on a story which had appeared in the London Guardian relating to the 1823 Demerara rising.

On Monday last, even as many celebrated Valentine’s Day with token expressions of love, One Billion Rising, an initiative aimed at ending violence against all women — cisgender, transgender, gender nonconforming — girls, and the planet, observed its ninth anniversary with the launching of a new campaign to transform “women from being victims to being active agents in protection of their rights”.

Over the last three weeks, global watchers have been riveted to news updates by the ongoing troop deployments and ensuing tension escalations on the Russia-Ukraine border, and the Freedom Convoy of truckers who travelled from the West Coast of Canada and formed a blockade at Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, virtually bringing the country’s capital to a standstill.

It would almost certainly have come as no surprise to Guyanese that the 2021 Transparency International (TI)  Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) lists Guyana as one of the Caribbean’s most prominent offenders insofar as corruption at the level of the state is concerned, the fact of the matter being that long before TI had made its report for 2021 public, the country had been struggling with prior blatant revelations of practices associated with official corruption.

Under the apt theme ‘Charting a sustainable energy future’, the International Energy Conference and Expo Guyana’ is set to get underway tomorrow with an impressive list of attendees including the Presidents of Ghana and Suriname and the Prime Minister of Barbados.

Last week the Annual Officers’ Conference of the GDF took place to discuss topics falling under the less than pithy rubric of ‘Enhancing national security and development through capacity building, empowering troops and strengthening community relations’.

To see our Vice President fumbling for words the other evening in his interview with VICE Media was not pretty.

Boris Johnson’s grip on the prime ministership of Britain is slipping. 

Formerly, when a woman was appointed to the top position in a firm, she was lauded as having broken through the so-called glass ceiling.

Justin Langer, arguably the world’s most demanding cricket coach, is now available after submitting his resignation with immediate effect to Cricket Australia (CA) last Saturday.

To varying degrees, the misdirection of state assets by functionaries is a region-wide phenomenon.

Following an Alliance For Change press release condemning the replacement of the Co-ordinator of the Guyana-Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GY-EITI), Dr Rudy Jadoopat, the government on Saturday issued a defence of the decision while confirming that his successor will be Dr Prem Misir.

There have been a number of criticisms about the recently launched ‘Atlantic Readers’ by the Ministry of Education. 

Last Thursday we were told by the Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh that inflation was 5.7% and food inflation 11.6% in 2021.

One looked in vain for any comprehensive contribution from Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Charles Ramson during the Budget debate on cultural matters.

Confirming much of what was already known, a report on Monday last brought into sharp focus the hypocrisy of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who not only allowed, but attended parties at 10 Downing Street during the period when COVID-19 lockdown rules were in effect in the UK.

Yesterday, 1st February, was the scheduled deadline for the sounding of the death knell for Derby County Football Club (DCFC), one of the 12 original members of the English Football League (EFL) and one of only 10 clubs to have participated in every season since its founding in 1888.

Not a great deal of official attention appears to have been paid, here in Guyana, to some of the comments made by the World Bank arising out of its December ‘Data Analytics for Anti – Corruption in Public Administration’ forum, including, particularly, those that have to do with the awarding of state contracts.

With the advent of the oil economy, the annual budgets of this country will take on a distinctly different appearance.