Editorial

Cuba’s Communist Party inaugurated its first Congress in 14 years on April 16, exactly 50 years since Fidel Castro confirmed his embrace of socialism, the adoption of a centralised Soviet-style economy and one-party rule.

At a symposium to mark the International Year of Forests earlier this week at the International Convention Centre, Liliendaal, President Bharrat Jagdeo boasted that Guyana has led the way in developing what he called the “economics of trees”, referring of course to the Low Carbon Development Strategy and its potential for raking in big bucks for the preservation of trees to be used in the country’s development.

Recent signings by the European Union of trade and economic agreements with countries in the Hemisphere, including the states of Central America in our Caribbean Basin, indicate the EU’s continuing determination to extend their formal frameworks of economic relations beyond the recently independent states of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Access to the state media by political parties never fails to become a major political issue during the campaign period preceding general elections in Guyana.

It is ironic in many ways that need not be elaborated that Surinamese President Desi Bouterse last week admonished his police force not to behave like “Hitler’s Gestapo” and warning that those responsible for barbaric actions can expect severe sanctions.

If the story of the government’s relations with the city council were to be made into a movie, no one would watch it because the plot would be so convoluted, so repetitious and so wearisome that it would be impossible to sustain the viewer’s interest beyond the first five minutes.

“You wouldn’t let your grandparents choose who you date,” says the advertisement, “Then why let them choose your government?”

Beyond the diplomatic rapprochement sealed by the summit meeting between Colombia’s new President, Juan Manuel Santos, and President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela last weekend in the Colombian city of Cartagena de Indias, there were signs that another festering sore in Latin American relations might soon be healed.

It was supposed to be the answer to the city’s garbage woes, foremost of which was the expired Le Repentir landfill that had so long polluted the lives of so many.

In recent weeks developments have taken place that show a new United States interest in furthering liberalization of trade relations with hemispheric countries.

Most post offices in Guyana, particularly the rural outposts, are small, inconspicuous fragile-looking buildings, not attended by much evidence of security.

Towards the end of March in its usual excitable style the Government Information Agency reported that President Bharrat Jagdeo had committed $50M for road improvement between Matthews Ridge and Port Kaituma in the northwest.

Considering that the PPP never stops talking about democracy, it surely has the most opaque internal ‘democratic’ processes of all the parties.

Two weeks ago on a theatre stage in Brussels, as part of a cultural project called Shahrazad – Stories for Life – the Iraqi poet and essayist Manal Al-Skeikh (born in Nineveh, now resident in Norway) read the following passage from a lyrical ‘Letter to Europe’: “My experience of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions taught me the following lesson: if people are determined to live, destiny will respond.

A row that has erupted in neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago may resonate with some in Guyana.

News that domestic violence survivors are finding temporary refuge at the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security’s first White Zone in Berbice is welcome and the programme as outlined by its Coordinator Nalini Katryan provides a measure of hope.

The eruption of a virtual civil war in the Ivory Coast is really a long-delayed effect of the character of political rule which this country has experienced since its independence in 1960, in particular the long period of rule (1960-1993) under former President Félix Houphouët-Boigny.

Some of us are still trying to get our minds around last Tuesday’s incident allegedly involving seventeen students from two city schools who, reportedly armed with knives, travelled several miles from Georgetown to Leonora, reportedly to settle a score with a student at the Leonora Secondary School.

At his press conference on March 31, Head of the Presidential Secretariat , Dr Roger Luncheon accused Stabroek News of “reckless hostility” towards the One Laptop Per Family project. 

Only now that the country is on the brink of an election has President Jagdeo seen fit to dispense with the services of his Minister of Local Government, Mr Kellawan Lall.