Editorial

The Financing Facility for Remittances (FFR) of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) meets today, marking its fifth year of operations and bringing together key players and partner institutions in the field of remittances and migration from around the world.

It seems that the real shock that has hit the larger countries of the globe now facing economic turmoil, is the continuing nature of the economic crisis that came on in December 2007.

There was much hype and high-spiritedness inside the University of Guyana’s George Walcott Lecture Theatre on Thursday.

For various reasons governments in this part of the world tend to escape rigorous scrutiny of the judiciousness of their expenditure on behalf of the public.

If there is one thing this election season has demonstrated, it is that we desperately need some kind of legislative reform to ensure that each party has equal opportunity during the campaign to make its case to voters and that none of them enjoys an insuperable built-in advantage to which the others do not have access.

In mid-September, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels sent a warning to the people of Nuevo Laredo.

Common sense has triumphed over political correctness and bureaucracy at the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), with that much maligned body reversing its decision to ban the England football team from wearing poppies embroidered on their shirts in their friendly match against Spain tomorrow, and instead allowing them to wear a poppy on black armbands.

Last Wednesday, three days after he had turned himself into a human torch, Clifford Carter, a father of three, died at the New Amsterdam Hospital.

Last week was an interesting one, though largely unnoticed, for Caribbean diplomacy.

There are now less than three weeks left until polling day and there are signs of a belated national focus on a general elections campaign that took its own sweet time to generate a meaningful level of public interest.

MF Global’s precipitous decline into bankruptcy last week must have jerked unpleasant memories in this region about disappearing investors’ and pension funds.

The mask is off.  After standing aloof from the head of state’s obsessions with the genus corvus for the last few weeks, and uttering appeasing noises about a willingness to work with the opposition should he be elected, PPP/C presidential candidate Donald Ramotar finally broke cover in Bartica last Saturday and revealed his true face. 

As the political drama in Greece brings the European debt crisis into sharp focus, it is clear that the consequences of a Greek default will extend much further than previously thought.

Whether it was inspired by the spirit of Diwali, as Trinidad and Tobago Finance Minister Winston Dookeran has facetiously speculated, or by the spirit of Halloween, as at least one blogger has unkindly remarked, former T&T prime minister Patrick Manning’s public apology to the nation has served to divide opinion there as to whether it was sincere or a calculated move with a hidden agenda.

In the wee hours of Sunday morning this week, amid heavy rain and high winds, an Ite Palm tree fell on Buffer Dam, North-East La Penitence smashing a small one-bedroom home, killing a five-year-old girl and bringing untold grief to her family and relatives.

With a finesse not uncharacteristic of Jamaican politics at its higher levels, the country has seen a new, and unprecedentedly young (38), Prime Minister sworn in following Bruce Golding’s resignation.

The notable features of the so-called Arab Spring have been its suddenness, its intensity and its awesome and altogether unforeseen outcomes; three well-entrenched and seemingly secure regimes – Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – toppled in a matter of months, almost entirely – save to a considerable extent in the case of Libya – without external intervention on tides of popular domestic protest, while a fourth, Syria, seemingly edging inexorably towards ‘tipping point.’

Even though it did not produce the desired result, Guyanese, particularly sport aficionados, should be exceedingly grateful to Ms Angela Haniff whose legal action against the executive of the Guyana Cricket Board, following the latter’s thoroughly scandalous elections, has exposed the quagmire in which cricket bodies have been functioning.

There has never been an election quite like it. Party alignments, re-alignments, coalitions, annexions and defections are happening so quickly, voters hardly have time to catch their collective breath.

Every schoolboy knows that a week is a long time in politics – but we often fail to reflect on the truth in this truism.