Editorial

Mind-boggling atrocities, many committed against children, are being attested to as the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor proceeds in The Hague.

Next Monday Americans will celebrate Martin Luther King Day. It is a national holiday for a national hero, the only black man to be so honoured in the United States.

If campaign rhetoric is anything to go by, the next American president – regardless of which party eventually prevails – will be a deeply religious person.

Is the killing of a fisherman by a posse of pirates or the killing of a businessman by a gang of bandits, so different from the killing of a suspect by a squad of policemen?

As with its state of unreadiness at the onset of the catastrophic flood of 2005, the Civil Defence Commission’s capacity to cope with an aviation calamity in this country is practically non-existent.

Friday’s commissioning of an $86.6M mobile drainage pump at Hope, East Coast Demerara must have lifted the spirits of residents in the area.

Reporting last week on the performance of the education sector in 2007 Minister of Education Shaik Baksh acknowledged that the literacy level is declining across the country.

The so-called Westminster model of democracy has been an unmitigated disaster wherever it has been practiced in ethnically, or racially or religiously mixed societies.

Four years ago, the election returns from Iowa ended the presidential hopes of Senator John Kerry.

Following the “Year of Elections” in 2006 and the rise of the populist left in Latin America, 2007 was a fascinating year for political pundits and all those interested in the region’s stability and growth.

What is really going on in Camp Ayanganna nowadays? Is the Guyana Defence Force running some sort of military Gulag?

Would the Caribbean people be wrong if they indicated a feeling, as the year 2007 has come to an end, that all is not well with our regional foreign policy-making?

Public safety initiatives that had been incubating in 2006 during the tenure of Ms Gail Teixeira as minister of Home Affairs slowly metamorphosed into an insufferable incubus by the end of 2007.

The United States government has admitted to brokering Benazir Bhutto’s ill-fated return to Pakistan.

On December 10 last year, a year-long celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was launched by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour.

The year 2007 provided little cheer for Guyanese, although it did have two major high points in the form of World Cup Cricket and the decision of the International Convention on the Law of the Sea Tribunal.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and its Thirteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 13) held in Bali, Indonesia from the 3rd -14th December 2007, agreed on a Road Map which requires Parties to the Convention to take individual and collaborative action during a two-year negotiating process 2008-2009, which seeks to finalise a post – 2012 successor Protocol Kyoto, that is reflective of the need for urgency in addressing the several core issues.

The Guyana Defence Force high command last week suggested that there needed to be a “paradigm shift” in its approach to security and a “revolution” in its professional culture.

There are two pointed dilemmas posed to the Minister of Local Government, Mr Kellawan Lall and the government as a result of the infamous bar incident a month ago.

While the world was shocked by the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, it could hardly have come as a surprise to anyone.