Editorial

Another month, another suitcase of cocaine glides unhindered through three layers of Guyana’s airport security and lands safely in the United States.

While the extraordinary levels of corruption in Guatemala’s criminal justice system have no parallel here at the moment, the excrescences in Guatemala City should be instructive to the Guyana Government which doggedly refuses to admit the extent of organized crime here even as the country is entering a potentially troublesome interregnum as the Jagdeo era meanders to an end and a new government is to be installed at general elections next year.

Last Sunday we reported that the government had advised donors against releasing funds for local government election programmes until further notice.

Anyone who has wrestled with the fiction of Wilson Harris could be forgiven for wondering whether his services to literature really merit a knighthood.

We are one week into the World Cup and the quality of the football in the preliminary, cautious skirmishes of the group stage has been, frankly, underwhelming.

The findings of recently concluded research in the United States revealed that a murder in the neighbourhood significantly lowered a child’s score on an IQ test and that the effects lasted for about a week to nine days.

The communiqué issued after the meeting last week between our heads of state and government and the American Secretary of State was entitled ‘Commitment of Bridgetown: Partnership for Prosperity and Security.’

Once could be chance. Twice might be coincidence. Thrice, however, seems a lot like a campaign.

Try as it may, the Government of Guyana has failed to convince critics and skeptics that the company selected to build the road for the Amaila Falls Hydro Project, Synergy Holdings Inc, was properly qualified to be chosen and has the wherewithal to deliver the job.

The inevitable has happened: the fourth round of sanctions to be imposed on Iran has been agreed by the Security Council.

Although no West Indian teams have made it to the finals, there are good reasons to believe that the upcoming FIFA World Cup, Africa’s first, might well be one of the best.

Last Monday, the Israeli navy shot and killed four Palestinians wearing diving gear, who Israeli officials said were planning a terrorist attack off the Gaza coast.

Sixteen-year-old Kelvin Fraser was killed on Monday when the shot from a policeman’s gun entered his body, perhaps damaging vital organs or severing a major artery.

At the beginning of this week, the new British Prime Minister, David Cameron warned the British people that they are likely to undergo a long period of austerity, his government’s survey of the economy producing a conclusion that the country’s financial situation was “even worse than we thought.” 

Only six weeks after United States Secretary of Defense Dr Robert Gates visited Barbados on  April 16 to launch the ‘Caribbean Basin Security Initiative,’ US Attorney General Eric Holder convened a one-day ‘Dialogue’ in Washington, DC on May 27 to launch the ‘Caribbean-United States Security Cooperation Initiative.’

As cricket is the premier sport of the land it follows that there are thousands of nominal stakeholders in the business of the Guyana Cricket Board by virtue of their patronage of, and abiding interest in its offerings.

If there were a crime of cultural malfeasance on the statute books, then Minister Leslie Ramsammy would surely have been charged with it by now, along, perhaps, with Dr Bheri Ramsarran as an accessory.

Nearly 50 days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught fire and sank, it is becoming clear that the scale of the crisis was underestimated from the beginning.

Last Friday, we observed that Kamla Persad-Bissessar had created history in Trinidad and Tobago by becoming the country’s first female prime minister.

Late last month, as preparations for the observance of World No Tobacco Day heightened, the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper ran a feature—complete with photographs—on a two-year-old Indonesian boy, who smokes 40 cigarettes a day.