Editorial

For the third time this year President David Granger appeared before the National Assembly to address MPs – and by extension the nation – on the matter of Guyana’s frontiers.

The election that swept Canada’s Conservatives out of power earlier this week shows that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom of many campaign strategists, optimism still matters in politics, as does tone.

On October 15, former Venezuelan presidential candidate Manuel Rosales returned home after six years’ exile in Peru and was promptly arrested at the airport.

It is events like the death of 17-year-old Nikacia Allen after her third Caesarean Section (C-section) in four years that bring forcefully home to us the fact that not only is society failing our children, but that our health and social/welfare systems suck.

As he had promised during the last general election in Britain, Prime Minister Cameron has now gone on the hustings again to justify, and seek the support of the British electorate for continued membership of the European Union (EU).

The government has decided to stick with its widely unpopular ministers’ salary increase.

Now that President Granger has spoken it appears that the APNU+AFC administration has decided there will be no turning back on the much decried salary increases for ministers which range as high as 50% for Cabinet members.

The old-fashioned teachers’ brigade will be savouring an ‘I told you so’ moment, while the One Laptop per Family (OLPF) aficionados would no doubt feel somewhat chagrined.

When the Marxist art critic John Berger won the Booker Prize for fiction in 1972, his riposte to the judges was exemplary.

Last Friday, in discussing the embarrassment arising from the arrest of the former Antigua and Barbuda ambassador to the United Nations, Dr John Ashe, and the damage done to the image of CARICOM by allegations of corruption, we suggested that influence peddling was a bit of a grey area in our part of the world.

The second reported case of physical assault of students by teachers in the Rupununi area, Region 9, for this year involves a headmaster, who, according to reports, was frustrated and allegedly lashed out.

Politics, in particular presidential politics, in our Brazilian neighbour continues to take an interesting turn as economic growth has substantially diminished since the period of President Lula da Silva’s tenure.

Even if we debate the matter of just how deserving of a salary increase our ministers are till the proverbial cows come home, differences of opinion on the issue will remain.

Appointing international civil servant Dr Richard Van West-Charles as the new Chief Executive (CE) of the Guyana Water Inc (GWI) is another ill-advised decision by the APNU+AFC administration that immediately leads reasonable minds to question whether the coalition is truly wedded to separating itself from the debased culture of the former PPP/C government.

Power does strange things to office-holders. When they are sitting on the opposition benches they see with great clarity the need for transparency and accountability; they promote the virtues of the meritocratic state, criticising nepotism and patronage, and promise value for money to taxpayers should they ever be voted into government.

The 2015 Nobel prizes indicate how much the landscapes of diplomacy and letters have shifted in recent years.

To say that the recent bombshell news of the arrest, in New York, of former Antigua and Barbuda ambassador to the United Nations and 2013-2014 UN General Assembly president Dr John Ashe, on charges of corruption and tax evasion, is deeply embarrassing to his country and Caricom as a whole would be a gross understatement.

If you work in an office where the number of women employed is at least 12, then according to the most recent statistics for the region, four of them would have been or will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex, verbally, mentally or emotionally abused.

In last week’s editorial on the continuing interchanges between the major powers, in particular the United States and Russia, we noted that both powers had come to realize that Syria’s civil war was forcing an increasingly direct diplomatic confrontation between them.

Among the issues raised by President of the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) Mr Patrick Yarde in his opening address to the Union’s Twenty First Biennial Delegates Conference last week was the worrisome issue of the continued occupancy of the Camp Street complex by the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) in the face of the revelation some weeks ago by GRA Board Chairman Mr Rawle Lucas that the physical conditions pose a threat to workers’ health and arrangements should be made for the relocation of the staff at the earliest possible time.