Editorial

United States President Barack Obama on Tuesday night secured his place in the White House for another 4 years, decisively defeating his opponent, Republican Mitt Romney in what has been dubbed a close race, particularly for the popular vote.

When the then Conservative Party Prime Minister Harold Macmillan decided, in the early 1960s, that it was in Britain‘s interest to be a member of the European Economic Community (EEC) established in 1958, there was much ambivalence expressed in the country which reflected the earlier British decision in the 1950s not to join negotiations then ongoing on the continent to establish the EEC.

A month shy of a year in office President Donald Ramotar’s administration  has laid down no clearly recognizable marker with which to distinguish itself from its predecessor.

On October 15, Mr Ricardo Rodrigues was gunned down at the GMR&SC bar on Thomas Lands.

“The party is over,” chanted anti-corruption demonstrators outside the Supreme Court earlier last month.

Allegations, and mounting evidence, that an iconic British television presenter sexually assaulted hundreds of women and underage girls has provoked simultaneous crises at two major news corporations.

As we are well aware, Hurricane Sandy tore through the northern Caribbean last week and transformed into a massive ‘superstorm,’ hitting the eastern seaboard of the USA on Monday evening.

When it was announced, last week Wednesday at a ceremony to award the country’s top performers at this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations, that Mr Ganesh Singh, a visually impaired student who sat the exams electronically, gained grade ones in English A and Social Studies, the audience of mostly students erupted into cheers.

Observers of the political and economic scene in Barbados will recognize increasing anxiety about the economic state of the nation, when viewed in the context of the government’s prospects in elections due next year (they were last held in January 2008).

Every year, the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) goes to the trouble of providing statistics that seek to apprise us of the ebb and flow in the relationship between the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and the public.

Worried about parliamentary gridlock and the potential for social unrest, the Private Sector Commission on Thursday convened a luncheon at the Pegasus Hotel to impress upon House Speaker Mr Raphael Trotman and representatives of the parties with seats in the National Assembly the need to work assiduously for compromise and in the national interest.

It is sometimes difficult to know whether the government is in a state of denial, or whether it is aware that it is playing a much weaker hand than the one Mr Jagdeo held, and is cynically trying to reverse history.

Although it seems more than thirty years ago, it was in October 1983 that the United States made two nearly simultaneous decisions that dramatically altered the scope of its foreign policy.

While much of our attention, with regard to events in the wider region, has recently been on the re-election of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and the ongoing and cautious process of change in Cuba, significant developments in not-so-far-away Colombia have not merited as much comment.

You can tell a lot about a society from the types of buildings it produces.

Two events relating to Cuba, and occurring last week, placed the country in the spotlight.

The political administration was bound to come out ‘batting’ for Clement Rohee.

In an interview reported in this newspaper on October 15, 2012, Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman stated that despite the sometimes acrimonious debates and what has been described as the infrequency of sittings, the 10th Parliament has achieved significantly in its eight months of operation.

It is a pity perhaps that Governor Lethem’s idea of a railway link between the Rupununi and Georgetown in the 1940s was never followed up.

The British historian John Keegan once wrote that the political history of the twentieth century could be approximated to the biographies of six men.