A. A. Fenty

Today I again side-step the usual, high-profile “issues of national significance”. 

Frankly Speaking a few folks would most likely, berate me for daring to juxtapose the illustrious Jessica Huntley’s name in the same (literary) vicinity next to Priya Manickchand’s.

Frankly Speaking, it is no longer surprising to me that certain issues of national significance keep repeating themselves as the years roll by.

Pity that in Guyana – and the world – of today, the issues as reflected in my lead caption attract national attention to the extent that they impact on the quality of citizens’ lives in terms of security and comfort.

I’ll understand if some readers are saturated with this issue of Guyana’s now-entrenched narco-trans-shipment and trafficking status. 

Those readers interested in this column would no recall that some six months (25 Fridays) ago, I penned a piece captioned ‘Inclusionary Democracy My Eye!’

Today is preachy-sermon day. This brief is another perspective on my well-worn theme of the new morality/abandonment of acceptable, old-fashioned values and virtues.

Academic, Historian, Ideologue/Military Officer.  Now Leader of the People’s National Congress and Leader of the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) – and Leader of the Parliamentary Opposition. 

Again I avoid today what those more competent will address – the economy, the crises of all categories, crime, controversy and Syria.

I concede, I confess, I admit: it is, perhaps, the third time in eighteen years that I’ve employed today’s caption to explore, most briefly, a favourite provocative theme of mine.

At the very real risk of upsetting my friends at ACDA – the African Cultural and Development Association – and other Afrocentric activists – (they could let me know that it’s none of my business”) – I, never-the-less, repeat some of my strongly-held Emancipation-Month views.

With respect, I repeat my own view that the typical working-class citizen of this big beautiful, but blighted land makes little time to consider the role of the National Assembly and its chairpersons, described as speakers.

Senior–Citizen moralistic lamentations again? I suppose so. But if I influence only one reader, I would sleep well.

A reflective Emancipation weekend to all.  The point has been pounded recently: that the physical, legal freeing of the BG Colony’s slaves necessitated the arrival of all the other immigrant–labourers here. 

I did my best to discover just who reviewed and “reformed” Mr Burnham’s 1980 Constitution of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana. 

Musical tradition has decided that Trinidad and Tobago is the “home” of the Calypso, that art-form that once outsiders defined as “a West Indian Song.”

Does not crime and punishment hold a permanent place in most societies?

“The Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) team met with a group from A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) in what will be interpreted as a growing recognition in the international community that the Opposition is in charge of the legislature.

If I’m accused of journalistic laziness today, I’ll plead guilty. That’s because in recognizing yesterday’s birth anniversary of Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s foremost international Statesmen, I shall record what anyone can glean from Internet sources.

Escapist again? Guilty!  As death by murder and mis-adventures stalk our newspapers’ front pages and as numerous commentators and columnists contend with our politics and governance in daily robust manner, I tire of such issues.