Editorial

The announcement of Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon last February that the administration was constructing a building to be used as an intelligence unit in the compound of Castellani House on Vlissengen Road sparked a controversy.

There will be little disputing that President Jagdeo’s descent on Buxton represented one of the most undisguised acts of political opportunism in recent times.

It is customary in the run-up to a general election for politicians to campaign on the record of a sitting government – either for or against.

Last Saturday, a contributor to our letter columns mentioned the “social fabric of our society.”

It is a cruel irony that the one item to displace the human tragedy of the devastating floods in Pakistan from top billing on the BBC World Service’s news last weekend was the shocking account of allegations of spot-fixing by members of the Pakistan cricket team currently on tour in England.

On Sunday, the members of the Guyana Police Force apprehended four young people who they had found soliciting funds from members of the public along Sheriff Street in the city.

Prime Minister Golding of Jamaica might well have thought that with the dispatch of alleged drug baron Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke to the custody of the United States of authorities, the long travail that threatened to destabilize not only Jamaica, but his own political legitimacy, had come to an end.

Three men, two of whom were armed with handguns, robbed five Brazilians and a driver last Tuesday night at the residential Fulton Court in Georgetown.

Jamaica watchers would be well aware that Prime Minister Golding and his government face collapse over the ongoing scandal surrounding the US lobbying firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips (MPP), in particular, the questions of who hired it and what exactly for.

By now no one can be in any doubt that the election season is upon us.

For tens of thousands of people who live in daily fear of sexual violence, the UN Security Council’s emergency session to consider ways of preventing mass rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) must look like the diplomatic equivalent of offering band aids to a bleeding horse.

Next month, on September 26, Venezuelans will vote to elect a new National Assembly.

On Monday last, BBC news reported that a massive traffic jam in China, which extended some 100 km and lasted for nine days had basically ended.

As President Obama approaches the mid-point of his term of office at the end of this year, he finds himself confronted by a mix of challenges, many of which have not been of his own making but became part of his inheritance.

Community Action Specialist Ms Rosanne Purnwasie faces a huge challenge.  She is responsible for implementing the Community Action Component of the Citizens’ Security Programme which was re-launched earlier this year by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Undoubtedly, the policies, practices and conduct of the Jagdeo administration will come under increasingly critical scrutiny and analysis as the end of its term nears, as its influence wanes and as the fear of its retributive capacity fades.

It appears that the Parliament Office is seeking to lay down a car park in the eastern portion of the Parliament Building compound.

Six years ago, while interviewing Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for the New York Times, the journalist Chris Hedges mentioned the imam’s “Cordoba initiative, ‘a blueprint to mend the relationship between the U.S.

In the publicity for the 1975 cult classic, Rollerball, the catchphrase used to attract audiences was the sonorous and pseudo-prophetic: “In the not too distant future, wars will no longer exist, but there will be Rollerball” – an obvious allusion to the conceit that sport is war by other means or, as George Orwell famously wrote, “war minus the shooting.”

On Sunday, eight-year-old Mark Anthony Girdhari Persaud of Annandale was electrocuted when he came into contact with an illegal electricity connection.