Editorial

More than fifty years ago the political scientist Richard Hofstadter delivered a lecture at Oxford University on the American public’s fondness for conspiracy theories.

Recent media coverage highlighting the bleak conditions under which some residents of Lombard Street are living has triggered, yet again, discussions on the high level of material and social deprivation endured by these residents while living in the capital city, and the challenges associated with achieving the goal of poverty alleviation generally.

For decades it stood there, falling down on itself; perhaps as a statement to the shabby aesthetic that cloaks all of the city’s markets.

Politics in Jamaica seems to have simmered down somewhat since the last general elections held in March of this year, when the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), led by Mr Andrew Holness defeated the People’s National Party (PNP) led by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller with a narrow margin of 32 seats to the PNP’s 31 and Holness remained Prime Minister of the country.

In the absence of hard evidence to the contrary, one is not ideally well-placed to vigorously refute the claim made by the Guyana Police Force last week that there had been a twenty-one per cent drop in serious crimes at the end of September, compared with the same period last year.

Given the sordid history of compulsory acquisition of private property in the Burnham and PNC era of the 70s and 80s, it would have been reckless for the APNU+AFC government, which has the reformed PNC as one of its principal members, to cavalierly seek to employ this weapon even if under vastly reformed legislation.

President David Granger went to Parliament on Thursday to communicate his vision for the remainder of his office, to lambast the PPP/C for their conduct of the nation’s business during their period in government, and to talk about his desire for inclusionary democracy.

Long before the Swedish Academy provoked the world’s literati by naming Bob Dylan as a Nobel laureate for literature, his “poetic expressions within the great American song tradition” had been noticed by several devotees.

Nearing the end of September weather experts were predicting that hurricane Matthew could potentially be devastating for a number of countries, and within a relatively short time it proved to be immensely destructive particularly for Haiti, but it has also seriously affected the lives of many in other Caribbean states, like The Bahamas, and several states along the south-eastern coast of the USA.

The restarting of night (evening) court sittings on Monday to deal with the backlog of cases in the magistrates’ division is welcome news as it means that the dispensing of justice will be speeded up.

As Barbados goes past the halfway mark since the last general elections in the country held in 2013, concern and discussion are obviously rising among the political parties about the prospects for the current Democratic Labour Party government led by Mr Freundel Stuart when its term ends, at a maximum, in 2018.

Real media freedom can only ever derive from an environment in which the media can be trusted to discharge its responsibility to its various publics without having to steal furtive glances in one direction or another in order to determine whether what they print or otherwise pronounce upon is judged from any other perspective save and except those of honesty and objectivity.

In a letter to this newspaper on October 1st, 2016, former President Donald Ramotar insisted that the PPP/C should be credited with transforming the procurement system and opening it up to public scrutiny.

Venezuela suffers from something of a Lewis Carroll syndrome where conducting diplomacy with this country is concerned: everything is upside down.

In two days’ time researchers studying suicidal behaviour will launch a mobile phone app that seeks to pool information on mental health and build an open data source for mental health professionals tasked with framing more effective strategies.

With 15% of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 having begun childbearing, according to a Situation Analysis of Children and Women, the chasm separating Guyana from achieving universal secondary education yawns as widely now as it ever did.

What, to many governments in the hemisphere, and particularly the government of the United States of America as President Obama prepares to leave office, must surely be a severe disappointment, has been the referendum last week in Colombia which rejected the agreement negotiated by the government of President Juan Manuel Santos with the guerrilla grouping referring to itself as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Quite what possessed the authorities at the Santa Rosa Secondary School to strip search female students in relation to the matter of a missing sum of money is unclear.

During an interview with HGPTV Channel 67’s Nightly News in February this year, recently convicted drug trafficker Barry Dataram alleged that the Custom Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU) was corrupt and he implicated a high-ranking CANU official in the drug trade, while claiming that the official would take as much as $10 million to allow cocaine to leave the country.

A letter in our edition yesterday from a representative of the diaspora ‒ or at least a segment of it – relayed Guyanese expatriate concerns that the government had reneged on undertakings made to them prior to the election.