Iana Seales

Why are there no answers from the government regarding the probe into financial irregularities at NCN?

Under customary international law, Guyana is obligated to prevent torture, and this obligation exists whether we would have signed the UN Convention against torture or attached any reservations.

With his recent elevation, new acting Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud has tried to signal that change was coming to the Guyana Police Force (GPF), promising improved accountability for unlawful killings and unjustified shootings, sustained efforts to end excessive police corruption, and policies that treat citizens with dignity and respect.

Some years ago in conversation with a colleague I had referred to City Council as an “archaic and useless body” that exists to furnish us with laughs, and one that also serves as a useful model of how an important democratic institution could disintegrate in the absence of crucial reforms, years of political wrangling and numerous internal trivialities.

The declining standards of our performances in sports was put into sharp focus when the team we prepared for the London 2012 Olympics returned following a poor showing – the reality was apparently so upsetting to the Director of Sport that he severely criticised the group calling their showing “miserable.”

Education Minister Priya Manickchand, facing a barrage of criticism for the CN Sharma remark she made in Parliament last week, questioned when it is a convenient time to expose rape and paedophilia.

The trafficking, exploitation and imprisonment of women and girls in our country’s interior is real.

Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar recently sacked her Minister of the People and Social Development Dr Glenn Ramdharsingh for his inappropriate behaviour towards an attendant on a Caribbean Airlines flight.

The continuing hostility and divisiveness surrounding the stalled anti-money laundering bill is an all too familiar occurrence in our politics, which has made it near impossible for mutual understanding and agreement on important national issues.

Although at 13 he was indicted for murders committed during massacres at Lusignan and Bartica, Dwane Williams was just a blip on the public’s radar until the recent High Court trial where he went from being a co-accused to a state witness.

Within the last four years, around 2,000 young people were arrested and prosecuted for marijuana possession in Jamaica.

The Finance Minister’s recent vehicular accident is not the sort of news you would easily dismiss on a hectic day at a newsroom, even if the write-up is just to report the basic facts.

It has been one year since he stormed on stage declaring “God Don’t Sleep” and unnerved a government minister who had the calypso pulled from the air.

The words “child abuse,” with their unsettling overtones of physical, sexual or emotional maltreatment of a child, are triggers for rage.

Living in Guyana, it’s easy to lose hope, in our leaders, in our institutions and our people.

In Plastic City live those poor and isolated from the progress we often hear about; those without basic facilities like water and sanitation; those who are disempowered and unable to exert their human rights but find comfort in knowing they at least have a roof over their heads.

It is not every day that you open the local newspapers and read about an entire police station being transferred from a community because of incompetence, insensitivity and as alleged in this recent case, complicity in crime.

“The majority of us are responsible for the kind of barbaric, lawless society we have today… We have become so disconnected from the sufferings of our neighbours that we are no longer able to recognise how their suffering is connected to the collapse of social peace and law and order in our society.’

Justice Winston Moore assumes the role of Ombudsman almost a decade after the office has been vacant and largely weakened, and at a time when administrative justice is lacking in our democracy.

It wasn’t just a night of love, it was a night of musical genius; an open air celebration of soulful ballads smoothly delivered by the gifted R&B crooner, John Legend.