Editorial

Indications by the new Governments of St Lucia and Jamaica that efforts will be made to have their countries join the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) will have once again raised popular hopes that our governments are willing to implement the commitments that they make – even if belatedly.

A matter of mere hours after the close of poll following Jamaica’s December 29 general elections, Portia Simpson-Miller, perhaps surprisingly, only one of four women ever to be elected head of government in the Commonwealth Caribbean, had delivered her victory speech; outgoing Prime Minister Andrew Holness had conceded defeat, his two-month tenure as the country’s youngest ever prime minister having been the shortest ever.

The case of the allegation of rape made against the Commissioner of Police, Mr Henry Greene has given rise to various perspectives and concerns including one by attorney at law, Mr Neil Aubrey Boston that Mr Greene was being subjected to a trial by the press.

If the political landscape has changed since last year, in practical terms the things that impinge on the daily lives of citizens remain very much as they were.

Earlier this week the writer Pico Iyer wrote a thoughtful essay for the New York Times on ‘The Joy of Quiet.‘

It cannot be mere coincidence that both Queen Elizabeth II and Pope Benedict XVI had special words to say about the importance of family in their Christmas Day and New Year’s Day messages, respectively.

The election of a minority government in Guyana has been a collective shock to all our systems.

Jamaica’s elections seemed to have stunned most observers, including the majority of those polling in the country.

Power has passed to yet another  Kim in the Democratic People’s Republic People’s of Korea.

The political terra firma isn’t quite so firm any longer; there has been a kind of earthquake, although there are some on both sides of our divided citadel who do not seem to have absorbed this new reality.

The news from Syria is chilling. Despite the presence of monitors from the Arab League, the Assad government continues its violent suppression of the protests with complete impunity.

For many people, the end of one year and the beginning of the next are naught but an arbitrary division imposed by the Julian calendar.

Georgetown has lost its appeal. Time was when it was a well laid out city, boasting concrete drains and canals, tree-lined streets, a demarcated downtown area and charming markets that could lure visitors.

Prime Minister, and de facto dominant leader in the Russian political system, Vladimir Putin, must have been taken by surprise at the revolt against his regime following the recent parliamentary elections in the country.

With such a short space between the announcement of election results and Christmas, the usual ferment of the season took on an additional frenzied quality.

At Christmas we are meant to embrace the better angels of our nature, learn from errors in the recent past and prepare hopefully for the future.

A lot of bread, so to speak, is going to be broken and a lot of drink is going to be consumed this long, Christmas weekend in Guyana.

Less than a month into her tenure, new Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Jennifer Webster, put her staff and the public on notice when she announced earlier this month that high priority will be placed on improving systems through monitoring and evaluation.

A year that began with a major surprise, the popular uprising in Egypt in January, and then in February with another, the popular uprising against Colonel Gaddafi in Libya that lasted for most of the year, put the global community, and in particular the major global powers on alert that arrangements which they had made with various powers in the Middle East and its environs might not have the stability that had been expected.

Egypt continues to provide Washington with sobering lessons in the frailties of US foreign policy, a policy that remains rooted in an archaic world view that perceives America’s vital interests around the globe as surpassing in their importance even the popular will of other nations and peoples.