Editorial

While Guyana at present is classified as one of the democracies of the world – although it came close to losing that status last year – it does not exhibit the full range of characteristics associated with a liberal democracy. 

“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of…” Adults of a certain age would be familiar with this rhyme, which has been attributed to English poet Robert Southey, who died in 1843.

It’s not difficult to envision the daily routine of former US president Donald Trump when in residence at his Mar-a-Lago Club on Palm Beach Island in Florida.

There was something ‘mighty peculiar’ about the picture captioned `Firemen during the inspection’ taken (as the caption indicates) by the Ministry of Home Affairs outside its Brickdam complex, which appeared on the front page of the Stabroek News of Friday October 8, partially captioned ‘Readiness check.’

Anyone who has observed the tribulations that have gripped the sugar industry over the last decade and in particular the Skeldon estate would have seen important signs in an address on October 4th by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo.

Any visitor to these shores would come to the conclusion that fires in the city were a relatively rare occurrence, given the casual approach of the citizenry and the seeming incompetence of the Fire Service.

It was announced last week that the Indian government will provide US$7.2m in credit towards delivering solar systems to 30,000 households in the hinterland. 

Last Saturday Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s 152nd birth anniversary was observed at his statue in the Promenade Gardens.

Often when people look back at their child-hood, the memories are such that they create nostalgia and there is a longing to return to days that were carefree and full of fun, for the most part.

On 23rd September, this newspaper carried an article in which a mother related the frustration she was enduring in her attempts to secure video footage of her daughter from the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) to fulfil the request of an international scout.

On Friday October 1, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) issued a media release in which it alluded to what it says is the “overwhelming number of infrastructure work which is being handled by foreign-owned companies” against the backdrop of “several complaints from its membership of cases in which they are being bypassed for work in favour of the aforementioned foreign-owned companies.”

Saturday’s catastrophic fire at the Brickdam Police Station laid bare yet again the failings of the government in the security sector and particularly the bumbling and ineffectual conduct of the Guyana Fire Service (GFS).

Georgetown was once a rather unique capital in the region, not just because it was a garden city, with trees lining the avenues, grassy parapets and so many houses with ample yard space accommodating tropical flora, but also because of its wooden, colonial-period architecture.

As stated in yesterday’s editorial, any local content emphasis should primarily be on jobs and the transfer of skills from expatriate workers to local employees over a well-defined period to create a cohort of highly skilled Guyanese that can begin to take ownership of the industry.

It is instructive that the government has chosen to spend its first year in office crafting local content policy rather than passing long overdue regulatory legislation and establishing an independent and hopefully apolitical Petroleum Commission.

Esteemed medical journal The Lancet has found itself in the headlines recently for all the wrong reasons.

It would appear that Murphy’s Law has become the very essence of West Indies cricket; just when it seemed that things could not possibly get any worse they have.

Last Friday’s media release from the President’s “Press and Publicity Unit” was intended to underscore, for the benefit of both domestic and external audiences, the foreign policy dimension to Dr.

Data provided by the Ministry of Health over the last eight days underlines the gravity of the current wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need for those who haven’t been vaccinated to come forward.

On September 16, in commemoration of Amerindian Heritage Month, the resident envoys of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union (EU) issued a brief joint statement encouraging the participation of Amerindian communities in what was described as the country’s “coming transformation”.