Editorial

The Christmas season is well under way and apart from the festive libations, the nostalgic juices are also in full flow.

More than a month ago, Babita Sarjou, a 28-year-old mother of one, left her mother’s house in the morning after stating that she would be back home by around 9 pm.

The Cariforum’s signing of an Economic Partnership with the European Union, hesitant as some Caricom member states might have been, marked a recognition on our part that much of our relations with the United Kingdom would henceforth proceed in terms of an engagement with that integration movement.

There is a sense in which Dr Leslie Ramsammy’s recent public statement announcing the termination of the employment of Dr Vishwamintra Persaud at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation departs significantly from the posture usually taken by government ministers and other high officials in the face of blunders and wrongdoings inside their ministry or department.

A reading of the report entitled “Preliminary Inquiry into the Fire Aboard Trawler `Captain Lloyd 97’’ leaves one wondering whether any part of the government functions remotely how it should.

This is a very unusual election season in so far as we still do not know who the main presidential candidates will be – the AFC excepted.

Yesterday the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an empty chair in Oslo.

Fifty years ago, the first ever tied Test was played between West Indies and Australia at Brisbane on December 9-14.

Last Friday afternoon four teenagers were taken into custody by the police for allegedly stealing two cases of Guinness from a drinking spot in Plaisance the previousTuesday. 

The recent United States congressional elections have given the impression of dissatisfaction on the part of the American people with the Democratic Party leadership in both Houses, and particularly in the House of Representatives.

When three security guards can be beaten, tortured then paid off for their pains on the understanding that they will not proceed with an official complaint against the people responsible for their ordeal, and when, moreover, the police can remain indifferent to such a travesty, we really need no further evidence of the quality of the society in which we live.

For many years it has been argued that Guyana needs a positive immigration policy that takes account of the stagnation in its population growth – a combination of heavy migration and a low birth rate.

Minister of Education Shaik Baksh has finally spoken. He now says his ministry has no such thing as a ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy.’

A recent biography of the legendary left-wing journalist IF Stone was memorably entitled All Governments Lie.’

The term ‘blood money’ usually brings to mind the thirty pieces of silver Judas Iscariot received for betraying Jesus Christ to the Romans or similar cases in history.

On Monday, the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security and its partners – the newly established Men’s Affairs Bureau (MAB), the Men Empowerment Network and UNICEF, which will provide the funding – piloted part of a plan to reduce the incidence of violence against women and girls at Skeldon, Corentyne, Berbice.

The January 2008 general elections having come and gone, the people of Barbados found themselves with a new government, having experienced a fifteen-year stretch under then Prime Minister Owen Arthur.

These are difficult times for the health sector, more particularly, for state-run hospitals.

Two Saturdays ago, there was a major theft from Mohamed’s Enterprise on Lombard Street.

Guyana is a land of slogans. We can all parrot them from the earlier decades: Feed, Clothe and House – by 1976, no less − and Grow More Food.