Editorial

Guyanese go to the polls tomorrow following what must be the most divisive and discordant campaign since free and fair elections returned to this country.

Last month the BBC broadcast a Newsnight election debate with a young, long-shot candidate from the Scottish Nationalist Party.

Tension, apprehension, fear, anger, excitement and hope are all jostling for space in the nation’s psyche.

The international charity, Save the Children releases an annual report titled ‘State of the World’s Mothers’ in which it looks at the best and worst places in the world to be a mother.

As Trinidad & Tobago moves into election mode (the last elections were held on May 26th 2010), Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar’s government seems to have been surprised by the most recent survey of the economy by the international agency Moody’s (as reported in this newspaper last week) which has downgraded the country’s credit rating from stable to negative.

By prevaricating on the removal of Dr. Bheri Ramsaran from his Cabinet after the former Health Minister had publicly and verbally abused rights activist Sherlina Nageer in Berbice then, following his patently insincere apology, done so again at another forum, immediately after, President Donald Ramotar did neither his own public image nor that of his government any favours.

By its shadowy and opaque standards of governance cemented over the last 15 years or so, it came as no surprise that the PPP government stealthily signed a deal with a local contractor to “rehabilitate” the controversial fibre optic cable project.

The British go to a general election four days before Guyanese do, and are engaged in as intense a campaign as any that has taken place here.

After a week in which the Baltimore riots have received round-the-clock coverage and analysis in the US media, it has become increasingly noticeable that many of the most intelligent comments on the situation are made by people who do not belong to the professional commentariat.

If one were to try to predict the electoral outcome on May 11, simply by surveying the social media and online blogs, one might be forgiven for believing that Guyanese are ready for change and that the APNU+AFC coalition is heading for victory.

Finally succumbing to unrelenting pressure from individuals and organisations inside and outside of Guyana, as well as the expressed distaste of foreign diplomats, President Donald Ramotar yesterday fired Minister of Health Dr Bheri Ramsaran.

Britain moves to parliamentary elections on May 7th amidst a tremendous uncertainty as to whether any of the political parties, in particular the Conservatives or Labour can gain a clear majority in the House of Commons.

Time was when the manner of last Saturday’s nine-wicket defeat suffered by the West Indies at the hands of England would have sent shock waves through the Caribbean; it would have brought forth a collective howl of outrage, a baying for blood, a boisterous, insistent demand that heads roll.

It must rank as one of the supreme ironies of this season that mere months after he headed a Commonwealth observer mission to the Sri Lankan General Elections, which by its very nature would have required evenhandedness and diplomatic skills, that former President Jagdeo has plunged headlong into the most virulent and partisan rabble-rousing on the political platform on behalf of himself and his party.

If it were not bad enough that Minister of Health Bheri Ramsaran insulted a woman in the most degrading way on Monday, in the process putting his utter contempt for the female sex as a whole on full public display, two days later he divested himself of similar remarks when addressing Regional Health Officers.

In September 1781, the British slave ship Zong set sail for Jamaica, with 442 Africans and 17 crew on board.

As last Friday’s editorial made clear, President Barack Obama, in seeing the error of the ways of previous US administrations and opting for the path of diplomacy, has opened a new chapter in his country’s relations with Cuba.

Minister of Health Dr Bheri Ramsaran’s disgraceful and horrendous abuse of rights activist Sherlina Nageer on the road outside the Whim Magistrate’s Court on Monday was revolting and inexcusable.

Any sense of euphoria experienced by President Dilma Rousseff and her Workers Party following her re-election as President of Brazil last year must now have vanished as large scale demonstrations broke out in protest against not simply sluggish economic growth, but what appear to be credible allegations of substantial corruption, associated with the state-owned oil company Petrobras, seemingly   beneficial to the Workers Party, prior to the elections.

The report earlier this month that several educators in the US State of Atlanta have been handed heavy prison sentences on racketeering charges linked to a widespread cheating racket at schools’ tests serves as a timely reminder that the region faces its own challenges with cheating at examinations, ranging from individual student concealment of answers to questions set for routine end-of-term/year examinations to more elaborate scams – including the advance acquisition of examination papers – that target the CXC examination.