Editorial

The People’s National Congress Reform’s forthcoming 18th Biennial Delegates’ Congress has attracted more public discourse and media attention than any of its recent predecessors, and that may well have to do with the fact that members and non-members of the party alike, sense that a juncture has been reached where, come this weekend, much more will be at stake than the election of new PNCR office bearers and, simultaneously, the election of a Leader of the Opposition.

Given the enormous failures at GuySuCo, particularly in the last five years, one would have expected radical changes this year in the management and leadership of the corporation accompanied by a new plan to rescue it.

Publication of some initial data from the 2012 census has precipitated a flurry of hypothesizing.

US immigration, legal and otherwise, has always been a barometer of the projected hopes of America’s poorer, less stable southern neighbours.

In positing, last Friday, that we, the Guyanese people, need to choose between recrimination and reconciliation, we had, in part, hoped that we would stimulate the type of public discussion that this newspaper has always championed.

For at least the last two years of his 21-year-old life, Kevin Fields apparently considered himself a high roller (rich ghetto gangster – Urban Dictionary).

Two weeks ago, as we drew readers’ attention to the struggle that British Prime Minister David Cameron was having to get his way in the European Union (EU), we observed that that struggle was part of a wider domestic political one being forced on the British public by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), perceived as essentially a fringe of the ruling Conservative Party, but opposed to membership of the EU.

In May this year a small group of Canadian businessmen came to Guyana to examine the prospects for increasing the volume and variety of local farm produce and agro-processed goods being imported into Canada.

It is clear that the PPP/C government is reeling from its public shaming over the refusal to call local government elections.

The contretemps over how Ms Manickchand comported herself at the farewell reception for the former American Ambassador has had a longer afterlife than the government no doubt expected.

A week may be a long time in politics, but Germany needed only six minutes to seal the fate of Brazil in their 7-1 rout of the World Cup hosts earlier this week.

Oftentimes, when we publish our editorials, we have little idea of how they have been received by our readers, apart from the occasional letters to the editor or, increasingly, online comments, viewed, of course, only by our online community.

As World Population Day 2014 is observed tomorrow under the theme, ‘Invest in Young People today, to ensure a Bright Future’, the world economy continues to grapple with an ever burgeoning population and rapid urbanization.

A recent opinion poll in the United States by a reputable polling group showed thirty-five per cent of the respondents defining President Barack Obama as being the “worst president since the end of World War Two in 1945.”

This newspaper has many recollections of frustrating encounters with high officials of government and senior public servants in the course of trying to secure a comment or perhaps a piece of relevant information that might help in the development of a story.

It never ceases to amaze the lengths to which this government is prepared to stretch the limits of hypocrisy.

Minister Manickchand’s tawdry behaviour at a reception marking American Independence Day that was also intended as a farewell function for outgoing US Ambassador Brent Hardt was not, it seems, simply a reflection of her own social limitations.

Britain’s phone-hacking trials may have resulted in the conviction of former editor of the News of the World Andy Coulson, for conspiring to hack phones, but the Crown’s failure to convict his predecessor, Rebekah Brooks, on the same charge (and for corrupting public officials, and conspiring to conceal evidence) is probably what will be remembered when other memories of the years-long saga have faded.

100 years ago last Saturday, a young Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, fired shots that were heard around the world, the reverberations of which are still being felt today.

Tomorrow marks the 41st anniversary of the signing of the original Treaty of Chaguaramas, which established the Caribbean Community (Caricom) and the Caribbean Common Market, doing away with the Caribbean Free Trade Association (Carifta) which was officially discontinued the next year in May.