David Patterson must be the most unfortunate of ministers. There he was, blessed with that all-important attribute which is so rarely found among members of Guyana’s governing classes ‒ common sense ‒ setting up task forces, getting pumps mended, desilting canals and generally cleaning up Georgetown, when we were visited by yet another pluvial inundation.
Rice farmers are no doubt reassured that they do not have an immediate crisis on their hands as regards the sale of the last and current crops.
In the course of a period when much of the world has been fascinated by the encounter between Greece and the European Union over that member state’s serious debt problems, a not dissimilar situation has arisen nearer home, with the Governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro Garcia Padilla announcing that his government was unable to meet a debt commitment of up to US$70billion, and was therefore facing a tremendous fiscal crisis.
It will take a great deal more than last week’s high-level meeting involving President David Granger and Vice President Ramjattan and their security top men to roll back the upsurge of criminal activity, particularly armed robberies involving shootings, some fatal, that have been occurring over the past two months or so.
Considering that the border controversy has remained the dominant motif in relations with Venezuela since independence, having a major portion of the booming rice industry here dependent on sales to Caracas and not even on a market basis but as a barter to redress concessional oil terms was always a difficult proposition.
President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has been very loquacious on the subject of Guyana recently.
“If history shows anything,” writes anthropologist David Graeber in Debt: The First 5000 Years, “it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt — above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong.
Most of our interest in the recently concluded 36th Meeting of Caricom Heads was, understandably, focused on President David Granger’s address at the opening of the summit and the position taken by the region’s leaders in their communiqué, with regard to Venezuela’s Decree No 1,787 and that country’s hostility towards Guyana.
Given his ineffectual performance at the helm of the Ministry of Home Affairs, it would have been wise for former minister Clement Rohee to employ his well-worn coy mode when he was asked about the new government’s controversial initiative to curb the sale of alcohol after 2 am; not that wise was ever an adjective that could be used to describe the former minister or his actions.
About two weeks ago we thought it useful to comment on the parlous financial situation of Greece, and the encounters which the government of that country was having in relation to seeking assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as from the countries of the European Union that are members of what is now described as the Eurozone.
There are a few things about last week’s two-day working session on finalizing a national policy on youth empowerment that merit public comment.
On September 30 last year, the Office of the Auditor General met its statutory deadline for the submission to the National Assembly of the annual report of the accounts for ministries, departments and regions for the year 2013.
President David Granger’s address to the Heads at the opening of the Caricom summit in Barbados last week was a tour de force.
Two newspaper cartoons from the United States neatly capture some of its current socio-political tensions.
We, in Guyana and across the Caribbean, are quick to embrace our sporting heroes, cultural icons and other high achievers.
Cuba marked its place in history on Tuesday when the World Health Organisation (WHO) was able to validate that it had eliminated mother-to-child transmission of not just the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV), but also syphilis, both of which are sexually transmitted infections that are also vertically transmitted from mother to foetus and can have debilitating effects on babies.
China’s response to the precipitous fall of its stocks betrays not only a profound ambivalence towards free markets, but also a certain measure of scepticism towards the liberal ideals that ought to underpin them.
High-level meetings held by the Nato powers and military exercises conducted at the same time, some in Poland for example, have resulted in expressions of concern by Russian political spokesmen as to whether the pre-1990 Nato-Warsaw Pact confrontation is being revived, even as the Warsaw Pact (named after the Polish capital) no longer exists.
Official disclosures about accountability issues under the PPP/C administration including unfolding investigations into alleged mismanagement and misappropriation of state assets are finding their way into the public domain thick and fast, and it seems that those disclosures and their outcomes will remain there for some time.
Friday’s passing by the 11th Parliament of the Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism bill established two important milestones.
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