Editorial

Following our Foreign Ministry’s statement, last Friday, on the situation in Venezuela, on which we have already commented (February 16), there have been several statements by other nations and organizations.

With just 50 days completed for this year so far, at least 13 people have died as a result of traffic accidents on the country’s roadways with a similar number injured.

Much anxiety seemed to pervade comment in the major countries of the Western world as Russia approached the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Opposition to President Nicolás Maduro’s administration in Venezuela has escalated into sustained street violence and, in the past week or so, loss of life. 

The World Justice Project which aims to strengthen the rule of law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity identifies four universal principles to be upheld.

On Friday evening the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement expressing concern over the political unrest in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and regret at the loss of life.

BBC footage of the flooded Thames valley shows hundreds of houses underwater, marooned by another bout of extreme weather. 

On Monday, the Pacific Alliance, which is barely two years old and comprises Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, held a groundbreaking seventh summit, in Cartagena, Colombia.

The recent admission in Parliament that Guyana has just 3 working breathalyzer kits in the entire country, which would obviously negatively impact on the functioning of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) as regards road safety should be of serious concern to all of us.

At the end of July 1990 an attempted coup in Trinidad & Tobago against the government of ANR Robinson took place, that continues to the present to be the subject of a Commission of Inquiry in that country.

If the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is widely favoured to be returned to office after      South Africa’s general elections scheduled for May this year, the political party once revered for its sustained struggle to bring an end to the apartheid regime in South Africa has plunged to considerable depths from the pedestal upon which it had been placed by the international community.

So, the undisguised takeover of world cricket by the Indian, English and Australian cricket boards has been approved.

The political contortions in relation to the failure to pass the Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill have left the public in a state of bewilderment.

During the last two weeks the United Nations has issued warnings that the Democratic Republic of Congo’s richest province, Katanga, stands at the brink of a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

It is perhaps a happy coincidence that following the success – both real and symbolic – of hosting last week’s second summit of the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC), when Cuba effectively secured the unambiguous and unanimous endorsement of the path it is pursuing by all 33 independent states of Latin America and the Caribbean, ambassadors of the European Union (EU) should have reached consensus, this week, in Brussels, on a recommendation to the EU’s Council of Foreign Ministers, to approve, next Monday, the terms of a mandate to negotiate an association agreement with Cuba.

Whoever thought that garbage was the main issue in Georgetown and that removing the piles of it that abound every which way and charging litterbugs would restore the city must have had a jolt when Alisha Thomas and her two-year-old daughter fell into a manhole near the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlet at Stabroek.

What Venezuelan President Maduro, at the Second Summit of ALBA and Petrocaribe, in December last year, described as a set of arrangements designed to “continue advancing the food security and sovereignty of our peoples,” has now been extended to all the smaller islands of the Caribbean.

The shooting to death of Leon McCurdy on Wednesday by the owner of a Paradise, East Coast Demerara home which McCurdy and two accomplices had invaded has evoked a range of public reactions.

Following a tense meeting of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in Dubai last week, it may appear that opponents of the sneak attack by India, Australia and England to take over the game have made significant gains.

Nothing is straightforward in Guyana. Last week Chief Justice (ag) Ian Chang issued his ruling on the cuts to the government budget made first by the opposition political parties in 2012, which will almost certainly be appealed to the Court of Appeal and the Caribbean Court of Justice.