Editorial

Last Thursday Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo added the subject of the highway sand pits to the varied list of matters he covers at his weekly encounters with the media.

Every three years, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) administers its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures the performance of 15-year-old students in mathematics, science and reading as a means of evaluating the global education system in order to decipher its gains and failings and the areas where more work needs to be done.

As of late, Castellani House has been in the news quite a bit.

No country can lay serious claim to possessing an effective overall law enforcement regime in circumstances where the ‘reach’ of law enforcement is constrained either by a substantive lack of physical and technical resources necessary for effective delivery, or, on account of a paucity of support from other critical institutions in the country, as a whole.

The  recent conferences of the police force and the prison service have been shadowed by horrendous crimes and failures that one hopes there was serious introspection at these gatherings and that the government will tame the hoopla about how well things are going and face the facts.

The heads of government of Celac – the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States ‒ met in St Vincent on March 1st.

In early January, European Central Bank Chief, Christine Lagarde spoke out loud what many world leaders are saying privately: that the re-election of Donald Trump as US President would present a major threat to geo-political and economic stability.

When the political party The New Movement was launched in November 2019 it described itself as a non-traditional political organisation. 

As the world celebrates International Women’s Day tomorrow, 113 years after the first global commemoration, which was held on a different day (March 19), it remains more than a little concerning to note that gender parity – the term given to the statistical measurement of relative equality between men and women, including access to resources – is still some 130 years away. 

Last Friday evening the Guyana Prize for Literature Awards Ceremony was held at the National Cultural Centre (NCC).

If Guyana has not quite acquired the level of positive international attention that derives from accomplishments associated with robust physical infrastructure and playing host to significant regional and international gatherings, there are indications that we appear to be getting there.

Has the evidence gathering and prosecutorial functions of the Guyana Police Force improved?

Anyone with common sense, not to mention the teachers, must be saying to themselves, ‘Thank goodness for Justice Sandil Kissoon.’ 

What an extraordinary turn of events. Chevron was all set to move in on John Hess’ oil patch down in Guyana and Boom!

We are less the prisoners of our history than the prisoners of myths about our history.

On February 4, 80-year-old Joni Mitchell won her tenth Grammy award for Best Folk Album.

On Monday, Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) bemoaned the lame duck status of the UN Security Council as it was “unable to act on the most significant peace and security issues of our time.”

For reasons that have to do with all of the various aspects of preparations by local contingents for participation in important regional and international events that require a fair amount of planning and preparation, it is customary that public disclosure on such events be incremental.

Almost three years ago, this government received what was for all intents and purposes the final report by UK firm IHS Markit of the first audit of expenses claimed by ExxonMobil and its partners for the period 1999 to 2017.

The timing of the Guyana Public Service Union’s decision to serve the government with an industrial action ultimatum will not do the Guyana Teachers’ Union any favours.