Editorial

The world’s cultural heritage is always at risk in times of war or when fanatics come to dominate an administration.

Almost fifty years ago, the editors of the New World Fortnightly published a feature on “The Intellectual Tradition and Social Change in the Caribbean.”

So, President Hugo Chávez has been re-elected with a healthy 55 percent of the popular vote, though by a slimmer margin of victory than in the 2006 election – 10 percentage points as opposed to 26.

When Mrs Vanessa Wilson-Johnson accepted the position as headmistress of the Mahdia Secondary School, she would have done so cognizant of the fact that she would have to leave her home, family and familiar surroundings.

United States elections, and especially presidential elections, elicit a natural fascination from citizens of Caribbean countries, and with the victory of President Obama this has certainly increased in recent years.

Setting aside the importance of finding out the truth about the circumstances that attended the killing of the three men at Linden during the July 18 protest in the mining town, the ongoing work of the Commission of Enquiry is important for another equally good reason, which is that it brings us – and more particularly the Guyana Police Force – face to face with the principle of accountability as an important tenet of democracy.

Just when one thought it impossible that the police could slip further into the reckless use of firearms and unprofessionalism, law enforcers have been caught up in a shooting outside of a popular city establishment which has left bystander Mr Dameon Belgrave of Pouderoyen dead.

By the time today’s edition of Sunday Stabroek lands on the breakfast table, thousands of Venezuelans will be queueing up to cast their votes in what is by far the most important poll in this hemisphere, bar the US election next month. 

After months of speculation, the fate of Bo Xilai, former Party Secretary of Chongqing and one of the country’s best known ‘princelings’ seems to have been settled.

Events over the past few years involving governments in the Caribbean Community would seem to reflect an increasingly unwelcome and worrying trend in the region’s politics.

The face of the future is an older one. Longevity is the new name of the game.

In the midst of what has been clearly the last stage of campaigning prior to the United States presidential elections, President Obama had obviously decided to treat the proceedings of the 68th UN General Assembly as subordinate to his campaign requirements and, some may have felt, something of a sideshow to what many Americans consider the greatest show on earth.

One of the unintended consequences of the UN’s involvement in seeking to bring an end to conflict between and among states is the risk – an increasingly high one these days – that its reputation as a peacekeeper may be even further eroded, providing even more grist to the mill of the organization’s critics.

Ever so often the toil of the conscientious journalist produces results which rattle the foundations of corrupt and twisted governance.

On August 8 this year, a cane farmer died in an accident on the Zorg-en-Vlygt Public Road in Essequibo; on August 12, a mother died in an accident involving a minibus and a car on the Lima Public Road and the two drivers died subsequently; on August 13 a six-year-old boy was killed by a minibus which was allegedly speeding near the Plaza bridge in Georgetown; on the same day a labourer riding his bicycle was killed by a car which was allegedly speeding on the No 53 road; on August 20, a man died following a crash involving two vehicles at Land of Canaan; on August 25 a motor cyclist was killed in an accident with a car at Conversation Tree; on August 26 a man was killed in a hit-and-run on the No 10 road, West Coast Berbice; on August 26 too, on the Bath Public Road a man was killed by an out-of-control truck which was allegedly speeding; on August 27 a former soldier died after being hit first by a car, and then being run over by a lorry when about to cross the road; again on August 27 a cyclist was killed on the Good Hope road in a hit-and-run; and on August 28 a man was killed in an accident at Saffon Street, La Penitence.

In the mid-1990s, when former US presidential candidate Bob Dole made a television commercial for Viagra, gravely recounting his bout with prostate cancer and the difficulty of post-operative complications like erectile dysfunction, many Americans were nonplussed.

It is difficult to understand, from a distance, what exactly is going on with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her People’s Partnership (PP) government in neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago.

Amid the stench of shame engulfing this country in the wake of government’s admission in this Education Month that it had been and intended to continue indulging in the theft of intellectual property, there came a ray of hope in the constancy of the Guyana Book Foundation (GBF), which recently began its annual distribution of supplementary reading books and teachers’ resource materials to hinterland schools.

The drama of anti-American demonstrations in the Middle East, Pakistan in Asia, North Africa and other parts of the world in the period just prior to the November elections in the United States, is obviously not the best background for President Barack Obama to be bringing his campaign to a climax.

High-profile personages including politicians are, as a general rule,  better positioned than run of the mill citizens to ‘make’ news, that advantage arising out of an entirely reasonable assumption that their pronouncements and actions will be of greater national import and therefore more newsworthy.