Editorial

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.

We have no physical space where citizens can meet to discuss and debate the issues of the day, preferably in an atmosphere of mutual respect and civility, to help build a national consensus.

Next Monday, October 31, will be a red letter day in the world.

It seemed almost inevitable that once Colonel Gaddafi went on the run from Tripoli, with the fighters of the National Transitional Council in hot pursuit, that his death would be next on the agenda of his pursuers.

If we can never afford to ignore the external threat to Guyana’s territorial integrity, the immediate and pressing issue as far as interior security is concerned has to do with an internal threat rather than an external one.

Following a conference in Beirut earlier this year the International Freedom of Expression Exchange – a network of human rights and free speech groups with representatives on all five continents  —  declared November 23 the International Day to End Impunity.

The crudeness of the current PPP/C efforts to appeal to voters has set a very low bar for campaigning.

At this stage in the elections season the focus is, quite properly, on the potential candidates for government.

We have just over a month to go until our fifth election since President Desmond Hoyte ushered in the current phase of our democratic process in 1992, by not only holding the nation’s first free and fair elections since 1964 but also recognising the result.