Editorial

When President Vladimir Putin decided to hold the forthcoming winter Olympics at a summer resort near the Caucasus, he must have known that it wouldn’t be cheap.

Whatever the official pronouncements coming out of the second summit of leaders of the 33-member Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC), in Havana, Cuba, earlier this week, under the theme, ‘Eradication of hunger, poverty and inequality in Latin America and Caribbean States’ and whatever President Donald Ramotar and Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett have to report on efforts to combat inequality, recognition of the challenges facing Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, the summit will probably be remembered as historic for other reasons.

Acting on a request from Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee, which was made public by the same minister on Monday, Police Commissioner Leroy Brumell has removed the police officers stationed at the Number 51 Village Police Station and replaced them with a new batch of law enforcers in a move he believes will reduce crime on the Corentyne and restore confidence in the Guyana Police Force – at least on the Corentyne.

The area encompassing what is broadly characterized as the Middle East continues to thrust itself into the global headlines and editorial spaces.

Now that President Ramotar has said that he supports an independent probe into the Colwyn Harding baton rape allegation, will his pronouncement necessarily lead to a swift, fair and transparent enquiry that will put to rest the issue and ensure that justice prevails?

Tomorrow, the Board of the International Cricket Council (ICC) will begin deliberations on a proposal by its Finance & Commercial Affairs (FCA) committee for sweeping and astonishing changes in the way the game is run and how tours are scheduled.

The resignation of Local Government Minister Ganga Persaud came out of left field. 

As the necessary and important reflections on the Great War are published throughout this year, historians have tried to grapple with the lessons of what American historian Fritz Stern memorably called “the first calamity of the twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang.”

Both explicit and implicit in last Friday’s editorial, prompted by rising political tension in St Kitts and Nevis, were questions about Caricom’s regard for the quality of democracy in the region and its willingness and ability to address issues of good governance and threats to the democratic order from all quarters.

Over the past few days this newspaper, as it has always done, published photographs that were taken around the country – mostly in Georgetown.

Towards the end of last year, the Barbados Minister of Finance, Chris Sinckler indicated to the citizens of the country that it had become clear that the country was faced with a reduced ability to meet its financial commitments.

Additional material resources allocated to the Guyana Police Force (GPF) ‒ including additional ranks, arms and ammunition, vehicles, computers and police stations – are unlikely to yield any commensurate improvement in the quality of policing unless, somehow, the allocation of those resources can be accompanied by a corresponding enhancement of the Force’s public image.

It should concern all of the people of Guyana, not only Region 10, that a multi-faceted agreement to address the origins of the unrest on July 18, 2012 that claimed three lives and sparked mayhem in Linden is yet to produce a single tangible result.

Dreadful things happen in this society, but nothing quite appalled the nation as much as the allegations which were publicized last week concerning Colwyn Harding, who is currently in the Georgetown Public Hospital under treatment. 

Earlier this week the government of Mexico sent thousands of federal police and military troops into the western state of Michoacán, hoping to arrest suspected members of the Knights Templar drug cartel.

Alleged arson attacks on the Venezuelan Embassy and the Organisation of American States (OAS) office in St Kitts and Nevis, two Sundays ago, served to place the spotlight on the health of that country’s democracy.

Almost 100 years ago, an army convoy travelled from the White House to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, a distance of nearly 2500 miles.

In the course of 2013 there was periodic grumbling within the region as to whether our integration movement had been making progress towards increasing unification of effort in both the economic and political spheres.

The fact that it took this length of time to cause the physical conditions in the vicinity of the National Assembly to secure some measure of public attention is a poignant comment on the way we live as a country.

On January 3rd this year, the Minister of Home Affairs, Mr Clement Rohee delivered a progress report on a series of new plans he had unveiled on the last day of 2012 to rein in crime.