Editorial

“Compromise is not a mediocre way to do politics; it is an adventure, the only way to do democratic politics.”

There are some things which take place in the international arena that are so bizarre they almost leave one gasping. 

As fire once again tore through part of the Amazon, members of the Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) were in Marseille, France on Sunday lobbying for greater protection of what is one of the earth’s most precious resources.

The 1973 Formula One (F1) Season, the longest in its history at the time, was down to the final race.

News reporting from across the Caribbean this past week has been weighted heavily in the direction of the decision-related challenges confronting governments at the beginning of the  second consecutive academic year since the coronavirus pandemic has, for the most part, kept the region’s children out of the classroom.

In November last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a notice stating that the Works Services Group of the Ministry of Public Works had submitted an application to the EPA for an environmental authorisation to construct a new Demerara Harbour Bridge between Nandy Park, East Bank Demerara (EBD) and La Grange on the West Bank of Demerara.

On Tuesday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to an editorial in this newspaper which appeared last Sunday, captioned ‘Fishing licences’.

Are you a pro-vaxxer or anti-vaxxer? Pro-oil or anti-oil? What’s your stance on Afghanistan or the rise of China?

The Covid-19 situation has imposed enormous stress on everyone, but leaving that aside what most affects us is less the nonsense from the politicians than the inconveniences, irritations and frustrations that impinge on the pursuit of our daily lives. 

Last month, Unicef published its first ever Children’s Climate Risk Index, in which it presented an analysis of the threat from the perspective of those who, all things being equal, will grow up to inherit the planet on which we now dwell.

In an interview last week, West Indies Coach Phil Simmons was at his wits’ end to explain the side’s latest batting collapse, and subsequent surrender of yet another Test match.

History has afforded us a considerable body of knowledge to the effect that, over time, systems put in place by governments in Guyana, ostensibly for the comfort and well-being of the citizenry, have been sufficiently poorly thought through and sufficiently ineptly executed as to cause these to become compromised, having been set upon for personal gain. 

When one surveys the oil and gas landscape, it is immediately evident that the odds are stacked in favour of the companies extracting the country’s resources and commensurately against the interests of the people.

The week before last an agreement with our neighbour to the east was announced whereby licences would be issued by Paramaribo to this country’s fishermen to operate in the Corentyne beginning in January 2022.

Whenever the state fails to provide services, citizens look to other means.

“Our body! Our choice!”  was the cry at Square of the Revolution and in Mackenzie and Wismar on Wednesday in relation to compulsory vaccination for Covid 19.

One imagines that a great many parents heaved a collective sigh of relief at the announcement by the Ministry of Education that public schools will reopen on September 6 for face-to-face teaching.

In Shakespeare’s classic comedy As You Like It, sad wit Jacques shrewdly observes, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven stages ….”

The near simultaneous fortune-changing oil finds offshore Guyana and Suriname inside what  one writer has described as “a new petroleum province……in the Guyana/Suriname Basin” has had the effect of shining an insightful light in the direction of the wider global oil search, going forward, never mind the fact that the global fossil fuel industry now appears to be locked in an intense battle with the rapidly growing global climate change ‘army’ for its long-term future.

Last week’s official visit to Guyana of Surinamese President Chandrikapersad Santokhi and a number of ministers saw the issuing of a joint communique on August 19 setting out the positions of the two sides on major issues.