Henry Jeffrey

On Wednesday 6th July 2016 president of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), Mr.

About two weeks ago the new vice chancellor of the University of Guyana, Dr.

‘Cities love meters – they are a “captive” income source. … unless you know someone or are a “public figure”, the city will tow your car if you have too many tickets.

About a week ago, with ‘tears in their eyes’, some of the executive members of the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) shared with the Stabroek News ‘their bewilderment at the lack of movement on the part of the administration to begin the collective bargaining process despite making several public statements about its importance’ (GPSU alarmed at gov’t lack of engagement on public service wage talks).

In the run up to the 2015 elections the talk among the APNU+AFC hierarchy was that they expected to win by about three seats, but as it turned out they won by less than one.

Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham became an autocrat, dictator, whatever description suits you, under our 1966 independence constitution, with its non-executive governor/president titular head of the government and armed forces; prime minister directly answerable to the national assembly; Westminster-type separation of powers; right to prorogation, etc.

So far as I am concerned, it is inconceivable, particularly in the context where first-come-first-served is the order of the day, that about two days after you would have promised to seat together about fifty relatively important persons at a public event like the Golden Jubilee flag-raising ceremony, you would not have cordoned off a designated section.

The apparent massive Afro-Guyanese support for and participation in and the apparent Indo-Guyanese absence from activities associated with the golden jubilee celebrations have led some to claim that the event will be more of an African fest than a national celebration than those who gathered to hoist the Golden Arrowhead on 26 May 1966 would have expected.

Beterverwagting (Baron) is one of our villages whose history is laced with legends, among which the win by the 8th of May Movement (8MM) at the recent local government elections will certainly takes its place.

There has been much comment on the proclivity of the present regime and its associates to name and rename various national objects and institutions, and this article has been prompted by the dispute over its wish to rename Ogle International Airport and the possibility that the City Council might give rise to more controversy if it still has on its agenda the renaming of 100 city streets for our Jubilee celebrations.

If nothing else, in our condition, secondary school placements based on the single Grade 6 assessment (NGSA), like its predecessor the Secondary School Secondary Examination (SSEE), will do nothing to aid stakeholder participation and thus will be anti-working class.

“Educational assessment must overcome a central dilemma, … If there are no consequences attached to a test, then it will do little to motivate healthy change within the educational system; however, if the result of an assessment is highly consequential, then it may engender unproductive or undesirable outcomes such as narrowing the curriculum, “teaching to test,” and weakening the role of teacher” (Braun, Henry, et al (2006) Improving Education Through Assessment, Innovation, and Evaluation.

 I am flabbergasted at the cavalier manner in which the Ministry of Education has gone about dismantling the secondary school placement system, of which the National Grade Six Assessment is but one element. 

Last week this column argued that the discourse about prisons should go beyond the usual concern with overcrowding, trial delays, etc.

What a cost when, in a most gruesome manner, seventeen individuals lost their lives as a result of having been taken into custody by a society that promised to safeguard all their other freedoms apart from their right to liberty.

Hours after Walter Rodney was killed and his body taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital, Forbes Burnham spoke to a well-connected young woman who was a family friend and a nurse at the hospital, saying he had heard that Rodney had been killed and wanted her to go find the body and confirm that it was indeed his.

Not long after Walter Rodney met his death in June 1980, I was at Castellani House, the president’s residence on Vlissengen Road, waiting to see Forbes Burnham, when Vice-President Desmond Hoyte entered the room.

What follows is a substantial extract from `When is the next Rodney inquiry?

An admixture of our unique political context and nearly two decades of autocratic PPP/C rule have given rise to notions of how we should conduct political discourse that appear to me neither practical nor complete.

‘Practice without theory is blind. Theory without practice is sterile. Theory becomes a material force as soon as it is absorbed by the masses.