This nation, such as it strives to be or become, indeed the whole world of nations, cry out for serious commentary, intense, informed analyses based on the study of the humanities, the philosophies and other rigid academic disciplines which human history has evolved for itself – and profound thought and conclusions which some other prolific writers seem capable of offering us. Sometimes daily!

I rue my condition; I regret my inability to contribute erudite and more social scientific, intellectual thought to national and international issues of daily significance especially today.

Fourteen years N.O.

Today’s offering – not your profound “column” – completes fourteen years of “Frankly Speaking”. And every year I crave indulgence to repeat the same sentiments.

A casual suggestion by Mrs. Doreen de Caires – now this `paper’s Managing Director – just after my PNC was dethroned at the election of ’92 resulted in the Editor-in-Chief accepting her “challenge” that I “continue to write pieces and columns in the Stabroek for the PNC”. That was at an evening function in December ’92 observing something to do with “Press Freedom” but I never really wrote “the PNC columns” during the ’92 campaign; I did much more than write, actually.

So it was that the only discipline in my latter-day life, still sustained, began. This man-in-the-street opinion column is today fourteen years old. I never missed a Friday (only when the 1999 strike lessened newsprint – not my fault.) I won’t bore friends with my usual modest but sincere self-assessments today. Except to say that I feel a touch of jealous impatience and disappointment when I recognize some of my earlier views, even speculation repeated much later by the more qualified, lettered or socialite type. The views then are marketed like rocket-science or a cure for AIDS. Ho-hum, and oh well