Editorial

On Friday evening the Ministry of the Presidency issued a press release stating that the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology had been “air-marked” – not earmarked, it seems − for a major upgrade and change of location. 

The Brexit vote and the rise of Donald Trump indicate that a large number of the British and American voters have lost faith in a globalized world.

Since assuming office, the David Granger-led coalition government has been guilty of sending a series of mixed signals to the population, specifically, his ministers and other party functionaries appear to be making several administrative false steps and public relations blunders, requiring the subsequent intervention of the President to assuage the ire of the populace and countervail whatever crisis was looming.

It is generally known that no one enters into any business for any other reason than to make money.

As November 8th, the date of the next United States presidential election draws closer, the polls appear to be clarifying the voters’ perceptions of the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties.

For what is unquestionably a landmark industrial relations engagement, the current wages and salaries talks between the government and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) are, at least up until now, proceeding in a decidedly low-key manner.

So much has been found to be wrong with the secret contract signed between the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) and Smart City Solutions (SCS) for parking meters over a 49-year period that it is amazing that it hasn’t been cancelled as yet.

The flurry of claims and counterclaims about responsibility for the costly failures at projects such as the high-value Kato Secondary School and the Good Hope Bridge is enough to send the tax-paying public into apoplexy.

“Character is not formed by the mind,” wrote Baron Pierre de Coubertin, “it is formed above all by the body.

If anyone was expecting the announcement of a comprehensive strategy to tackle the student debt problem, both in terms of existing non-performing debt already on the books, and the processing and managing of new debt through the Student Loan Programme, they were to be disappointed.

It was disturbing to learn that many children are not only unprepared for their placement in residential care, but continue to be unaware of how long they are required to stay.

The decision of the Government of Jamaica to establish a Caribbean Community (Caricom) Review Commission probably caught other Caricom countries and governments by surprise.

There had been an audible public outrage after news of the fire at the Hadfield Street Drop-In Centre managed by the state-run Child Care and Protection Agency and which claimed the lives of two young children.

Given the entrenched ethno-political polarisation in the country and the willingness of any number of politicians to exploit this, it is no surprise that there have been shrill declarations recently about discrimination against Indo-Guyanese and other ills.

Cases involving illegal immigration usually slide by without attracting much public attention, but that was not so last week.

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” said US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan a generation ago, “but not his own facts.” 

Last month when he announced government’s plan to expand our emergency medical services Minister Joe Harmon stopped short of acknowledging that the emergency response here is downright poor, and that it fails to provide timely and life-saving assistance to citizens.

Something seems to be not quite right with the accounting at City Hall, or if it is, there is a huge misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up.

It might have been surprising to observers that so soon after the 37th Caricom Heads of Government meeting from the 4th to 6th of this month, the Trinidad & Tobago Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley should have chosen to make an official visit to Jamaica to discuss bilateral relations between the two countries.

Sunday’s comprehensive defeat suffered by the West Indies cricket team in the first of four Test matches against a clearly superior Indian outfit provided a poignant reminder that the road back from ignominy to international cricketing respectability in Test cricket will be long and difficult, and that it may well take a generation or more ‒ if indeed those days do return even that quickly.