Editorial

It seems like many moons ago since street banditry took the form of choke-and-rob, with the assailant armed with no more than a knife.

It is estimated that during last year, some 30 million metric tonnes of plastic were added to the trillions already polluting the world’s waterways and killing marine life.

“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” Translation: “I fear the Grecians even when they offer gifts” – Virgil’s Aeneid Book II, line 48 As the People’s Republic of China’s world economic power continues to expand rapidly, it is being accompanied by a shrewd willingness to increase its influence on the direction of global affairs.

There is something to be said for the sharp contrast between how the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic is being administered in our colleague CARICOM member country, Barbados and how it is being handled here.

It is passing strange that there has been no official announcement by the Government of Guyana on the accreditation of Charrandass Persaud as Guyana’s High Commissioner to India on March 18.

One of this country’s great natural treasures is not even appreciated by a majority of its inhabitants. 

A new book by Bill Gates addresses the climate crisis with urgent clarity.

Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha has had plenty of exposure in the state media as he traverses around the country on his outreaches, and speaks on a whole range of issues affecting the agriculture sector.

Among the ways the government intends to invest in the people of Guyana, according to the 2021 National Budget, is to allocate 10,000 house lots and distribute 7,000 land titles and it has set aside $6 billion for infrastructure and utility works in new and existing housing areas.

On Sunday 28th March, the day before the commencement of the Second Test between Sri Lanka and the West Indies, there will be a Virtual Test, of equal, or even more significance.

Every time that there is a changing of the political guard in Guyana there occurs some element of  change in the lineup of public officers.

With the death toll from COVID-19 at 207 and most likely understated, the urgency of ensuring herd immunity through vaccination remains a pressing issue.

The Reverend Patrick Doolichand must be the first man ever in the history of this country to lose his job over a prayer. 

In 1867 the  journalist Walter Bagehot described the English Constitution as a delicate interplay between a part of the state that would “excite and preserve the reverence of the population” and one that would “employ that homage in the work of government.”

Guyanese must often be inclined to think that their politicians are very tiresome.

Last October, just before the launch of an ambitious billion-dollar project aimed at combatting domestic violence at the end of that same month, this newspaper published two articles that reported on the presence of that scourge in two different segments of society.

The Trinidad Guardian newspaper’s editorial of 17th January this year, titled `Carnival opportunities lost’ highlighted the fact that the National Carnival Committee (NCC) had failed to grasp the opportunity to create alternative events in virtual space following the announcement by Prime Minister Keith Rowley in late September last year of the cancellation of the Caribbean’s standard bearer for the festival.

What, on Sunday, amounted to a decidedly embarrassing episode in the process of the staging of a public event executed under the patronage of the President, was as much a function of the seeming indifference that has attended the official approach to the enforcement of the protocols associated with seeking to guard against the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it was a manifestation of the widespread and now seemingly out of control public indifference to those protocols.

On January 29th when ExxonMobil in the barest of press releases announced that it was experiencing renewed problems with the compressor on the Liza-1 offshore platform and that gas flaring would have to be resumed above pilot levels, questions immediately arose as to what the regulatory authorities should do.

Anyone who thought that we had entered a less adversarial phase in relation to Venezuela following the return of the fishing vessels will have to think again.