Editorial

As the potential firestorm continues to brew over the city of Georgetown on the parking meters, the debate rages on, tempers flare, meetings are held, discussions take place, and eventually the dust will settle and the matter will be resolved one way or another.

It is probably not surprising that quite a few commentators on the unfolding parking meter saga have alluded to the role which public protest has played in the evolution of the issue.

On February 8th, the Office of the Prime Minister announced the arrival of a team of constitutional experts from the United Nations System for what was described as a constitutional reform needs assessment mission.

The protest against parking meters has changed the political landscape in odd ways. 

Earlier this week President Trump told law enforcement officials that his proposed wall on the US-Mexican border “is getting designed right now.”

Last month the press reported that the British government had issued a call encouraging persons over 50 years old to take up apprenticeships, and offered incentives to businesses which got onboard with the initiative.

On Monday, a 52-year-old Corentyne man succumbed to poisoning at the New Amsterdam Hospital in Berbice.

Every decade of time can be identified by, or associated with, specific songs or slang or buzzwords that resonate with that period. 

The setting up by the David Granger administration of a Commission on Inquiry into the Public Service and the government’s subsequent agreement to engage the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) in talks on Public Servants’ wages, salaries and conditions of service amounted to important breakthroughs for the Public Service given the unwholesome condition in which it had found itself for decades.

On Wednesday the Ministry of Natural Resources invited the media to an event at the Marriott Hotel where US oil company ExxonMobil was to brief Government of Guyana officials on the latest developments in the commercialising of the country’s offshore oil riches.

So Georgetown has struck back. Or more properly speaking, Georgetown and its environs have struck back by boycotting City Hall’s parking meters.

The chaos produced by the Trump immigration ban offers a glimpse of the disruptions that American institutions should expect in the near future.

The day before yesterday, Town Clerk Royston King held a meeting in City Hall’s chambers with wash-bay operators, during which he announced that those located in Queenstown would no longer be permitted to operate and that they had two weeks in which to cease work.

As usual, during the rainy season many of our streets become difficult to traverse.

The government recently announced the imminent passage of the SARA (State Asset Recovery Agency) Bill through Parliament.

The signing into law by President Barack Obama of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in 2010 was intended to do more than send a message to Americans that the country was raising its game as far as its food safety standards were concerned.

Saturday’s election of Raphael Trotman as Leader of the AFC – one of the two main components of the governing coalition – will be seen as a major upset and a blow to the incumbent – Khemraj Ramjattan who had been going for a third term.

It was Mr Ralph Ramkarran who in an uncompromising column published in this newspaper last week, drew the public’s attention to what he called the Guyana Chronicle’s “obscene calumny” against Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag) Carl Singh.

This week as the Trump administration began to deliver on its promises to overturn settled practices in Washington, it was hard to decide which of its proposed changes was the most disruptive.

Despite being on the front burner in terms of advocacy by social activists and the relevant government agencies, there seems to be no positive change in terms of the incidence of domestic violence across Guyana.