Editorial

Yesterday an animated gif and a misjudged prank provoked the ire of thousands of Internet users.

As was made clear in Wednesday’s editorial, President Barack Obama’s visits last week to Cuba and Argentina could be said to have had as their overriding objective the “normalization of relations” between the USA and those two countries.

The Commission of Inquiry (CoI) notwithstanding, the pervasiveness of drugs in Guyana’s prisons point to a deterioration in the running of penal institutions that will be extremely difficult to remedy.

In what will probably be his last visit to our hemisphere before he leaves the presidency of the United States, President Obama chose two countries with which his country has sought to normalize relations, Cuba and Argentina.

The significance of the recently concluded local government elections is unlikely to become fully apparent for some time yet, even though the fact that after more than two decades we have, at last, been able to pull off a local government poll is in itself an accomplishment.

Now that the APNU+AFC government has begun to release the reports of audits into state corporations and other entities, it is all the more indefensible that a 56-day hiatus in Parliamentary sittings has been set.

One has the impression that the public’s familiarity with the history of this country is not as great as it used to be – all except the period since the Second World War, that is.

Throughout his presidency, Barack Obama has always given the impression of trying to hold true to the principle that one should heed the lessons of history and take actions that are grounded in a deep awareness of history, without allowing oneself to be shackled by history.

Last Wednesday, this newspaper broke a story about APNU+AFC Local Government Election (LGE) candidate Mr Winston Harding, who had faced several accusations and charges of child sexual abuse.

When, at the end of December of 1991, the Soviet Union, or USSR, ceased to exist, and its component parts established with the Russian Federation a Commonwealth of Independent States, there would have been much speculation that its Caribbean partner, Cuba, would have to proceed to consider its own status, given the tight integration that existed between the USSR and the Caribbean communist state.

A matter of mere months before his two terms as President of the United States come to an end, Barack Obama has undertaken the most important foreign policy initiative of his tenure.

Friday’s epochal Local Government Elections (LGE) constitute a clear rejuvenation of the local government system even though the domination by the main parties remains a huge impediment.

Local government elections were finally run off on Friday after a wait of nearly nineteen years.

Increasingly, the Age of Information has become the Age of Surveillance.

Notwithstanding his recent indiscretions, Chris Gayle’s match-winning, 47-ball century with 11 sixes, in West Indies’ first match against England in the ICC World T20 championship in Mumbai on Wednesday, was an undoubted crowd-pleaser and an emphatic reminder that he is still one of the most destructive batsmen in international T20 cricket, if not the master of the format.

On Tuesday, we reported that a ten-year-old boy was taken to the Springlands Police Station by his neighbours last Saturday and an allegation made that he had stolen something from them.

A statement last week by Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados, Dr DeLisle Worrell, indicates a certain optimism on the part of the authorities about the future of a Barbados economy which had barely indicated growth over almost a decade.

Those Guyanese who were not afforded the opportunity of being present to witness at least some of the hearings of the Commission of Inquiry into the Public Service would have been denied an important opportunity to arrive at a helpful understanding of the condition of the public service including, particularly, some of the reasons why it is the way it is in the first place.

In its meteoric transformation after decades-long decrepitude, the Kitty Market can be seen as a metaphor for Friday’s historic local government elections (LGE) while at the same time raising troubling questions about the impositions of central government on the lower tiers of governance.

Save for the 1994 poll, this country has not really been acquainted with local government elections for two generations.