Editorial

While the squatters at Success were slowly being submerged under water and the police were firing pellet rounds, President Irfaan Ali was at the Providence Stadium in dream mode.

Split-screen town halls with candidates duelling for audiences is the perfect emblem of where the United States finds itself on the eve of this election.

Once in a while – although very infrequently nowadays – someone raises questions about Georgetown’s nomenclature, and by implication that of coastal Guyana as a whole. 

On Monday last, the Ministry of Education was forced to issue an apology for what it deemed “inappropriate content” on the Guyana Learning Channel.

The passing of the American singer and songwriter Johnny Nash last week no doubt evoked bittersweet memories of another era for the older generation of Guyanese.

Such public comment as has been expressed over the decision to push back the boundaries of the COVID-19 curfew and – perhaps more importantly —to re-open the country’s two international airports, is altogether understandable. 

On September 30, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) warned that health systems in the Americas were not adequately responding to the needs of older adults and must be adapted in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After all the patter about inclusion and constitutional reform to which the public has been treated by President Irfaan Ali, the evidence that these statements are to be invested with any substance is scant.

This week the White House reported more Covid-19 infections than 12 entire countries and several European nations were imposing emergency measures to dampen the impact of a second wave of the pandemic.

At least a glimmer of sanity flickered uncertainly in the darkness of our health crisis on Wednesday, when it was announced that a strike by the nurses of the Georgetown Public Hospital was to be put ‘on hold’. 

Viewed on a graph, Guyana’s COVID-19 figures are on a quickening upward climb.

The arms of the local metaphorical rumour windmill have started gathering speed and names are being bandied around for the vacant post of Director of Sports.

Last week’s small squall arising out of the handling of the official disclosure that the strictures relating to Public Servants’ work schedules were being removed and that the COVID-19 curfew window was being pushed open further resulted largely from the brusque manner in which the announcement was made.

At his press conference on Friday, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo shut the door comprehensively on the use of the approval of the Payara licence as a means of leverage to improve the scandalous Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) concluded by the APNU+AFC government in 2016 with ExxonMobil’s subsidiary EEPGL and its partners Hess and CNOOC.

We live next door to a criminalised state.  The formal structures which normally sustain governmental operations in any nation have been subverted in Venezuela by entrenched corruption. 

An ‘October surprise’ is what the US media call late-breaking news that can tilt an election.

The revised Cummingsburg Accord which sets out the terms of the APNU and AFC political alliance has been breached yet again. 

During his presentation on the 2020 National Budget, Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony claimed that the former APNU+AFC Govern-ment did not test samples from deceased persons who displayed COVID-19 symptoms.

Our boy, Dave Martins, songwriter extraordinaire, and leader of the famous Tradewinds band, has penned many songs which have provided insights to our unique approach to life in the West Indies.

Last week, in a somewhat thespian sort of manner, Minister Kwame McCoy summoned members of staff of the Office of the President to a ‘sit down’ meeting to declare that the President’s staff would be leading the way in the reopening of the Public Service to full time work, departing from the rotation arrangement that had been in place in recent months as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.