Editorial

The first debate between the contenders, the Republican Donald Trump and the Democrat Hillary Clinton, has now been held.

The announcement earlier this week that City Hall is to demolish more than fifty buildings in the city deemed to be in a ruinous state and posing a danger to their occupants and to the public as a whole, will be greeted with satisfaction by a number of citizens.

After many years of PPP/C governance during which there was a heavy veil drawn across the huge procurement sector, the people of this country have an excellent opportunity to begin learning how decisions are made osn high value public contracts and whether they can stand up to scrutiny.

On Tuesday, President David Granger reprised last year’s appeal to the UN General Assembly in relation to the border controversy with Venezuela, and accused that country of obstructing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s efforts for a final resolution. 

As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ready themselves for a debate that is likely to reach more than 100 million viewers, both candidates will recall the outcome of the first, infamous televised encounter between Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy.

It has been just about one week now since the Traffic Department of the GPF commenced ‘Operation Safeway,’ in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Infrastructure and the National Road Safety Council, aimed at achieving a marked reduction in road deaths through increased national awareness of road safety matters, a heightened police presence on the roads and the stringent application of the laws.

The practice by government officials to make grandiose pronouncements on issues around the time of national or international observances of said issues has been so overdone that it has become expected.

The Christian Democratic Party the leading party in the German coalition government, and from our perspective a central actor in the European Union and therefore in wider Europe, has now suffered a third election defeat in regional elections, this time in the capital city Berlin where a right-wing minority party, Alternative for Germany, has made a substantial showing at the polls (14.1% of the votes) on an anti-immigration platform.

It is a few weeks short of three years since the then President, Donald Ramotar, launched the Micro and Small Enterprise Development (MSED) Programme in October 2013 with much aplomb at what is now the Arthur Chung Convention Centre.

An indispensable facet of good governance is the considerate presentation of important decisions and ensuring that there is transparency coupled with the willingness to provide explanations if challenged.

The vendors’ story is well-worked terrain. The issues go back a long way, and the arguments in relation to them have not changed over the years.

In one of his lighter moments, T S Eliot – who made his living as an editor – once conceded that ”some editors are failed writers.”

In August 2015, the City Constabulary of the Georgetown Mayor & City Council terminated the services of three trainee city constables on the basis of them becoming pregnant before the expiration of a specified two year window during which they were prohibited from becoming pregnant.

There was, understandably, significant consternation expressed over a recent article published in this newspaper on the results of the Guyana Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey Round 5 (MICSR5), particularly the findings regarding physical violence.

One year after general elections were held in Trinidad & Tobago and the Peoples National Movement (PNM), led by Dr Keith Rowley, was elected to government, the pollsters have been busy assessing the views of public opinion on the government’s performance.

September, Education Month, serves as a timely reminder of what remains the gap between the various challenges in our education system and our failure to effectively address many if not most of those challenges, despite our significant financial investment in education and the unending public discourse, over the years, about what the problems are and how they can be fixed.

Coming after years of serious questions about Baishanlin’s conduct here, the decision last week by the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) to repossess the Chinese company’s forestry concessions will be seen as a positive development in ensuring the accountability of foreign investors and the judicious development of the country’s resources.

President David Granger has proved resistant to reshuffling his cabinet, which is sometimes used as a euphemism for dropping a minister or two.

The Observer newspaper recently invited five writers to share their reflections on the Obama years – to consider what had changed within the United States and how the President would most likely be remembered.

In its guidelines for drinking-water quality, the World Health Organization says that access to safe potable water is “essential to health, a basic human right and a component of effective policy for health protection”.