Editorial

In an address to the nation on Monday President David Granger was formal in demeanour and unctuous of tone as he welcomed the announcement of a date for the start of the recount, and called on Guyanese to be patient.

For all of the incredulous things that have been happening recently, we could all be characters on a giant movie set.

Cricket, or to be more specific, the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), was once again stealing the headlines last week, without a ball being bowled.

There are communities all across coastal Guyana whose ‘beating hearts’ are carefully concealed from the outside   except outsiders are welcomed in.

On May 1st, de facto Minister of Public Health, Volda Lawrence expressed exasperation at the rise in the number of COVID-19 cases and the threat that this posed to the general population.

On Thursday a fireworks explosion at the GDF base in Timehri killed three soldiers and injured two others.

As Covid-19 exposes structural flaws in leading democracies and terrifying vulnerabilities elsewhere, it has highlighted a group, comprising hundreds of millions of people, of what might be called an international ‘precariat.’

There has never been a May 1 like this one.  It is true that the celebration of the workers’ day in recent times has not been what it once was, but it still retained a certain symbolic significance.

As the two-month mark since the holding of general and regional elections approaches with no properly announced result and the recount of votes scrutinised by a Caricom team still to begin, there are a few, no, several things that are immediately apparent.

The popular weekly radio talk show, The Mason & Guests Show, hosted by West Indian cricket commentator, Andrew Mason, which is broadcast every Tuesday evening from 6:15 pm to 8:00 pm, on the Voice of Barbados (VOB) 92.9 Fm and vob929.com,

It is the manner in which the marauding coronavirus   has reduced us, jerked us out of our comfort zone, disabused us of illusions about who we are and about the might and the competencies of our   civilization, that is now arresting our attention.

Whenever GECOM gets its act together and the recount of the votes from the March 2nd general elections begins at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) it should be clear to all that there will be riggers present hoping to continue their mission for the illegal installation of an APNU+AFC government.

While we still don’t know when exactly the recount of Guyana’s ten electoral districts will start, the exhausted citizenry has now been told by Gecom that the operation could take at least 25 days, if not longer. 

A well-known Bertold Brecht poem begins: “Truly, I live in dark times!

While Covid-19 appears to the world’s population to have descended on the planet without any advance notification, in actuality there have been warning signs in more recent times.

One of the iconic images of this pandemic period was captured on Sunday in Denver, Colorado in the US.

When China hosted the 22nd Annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in November, 2014, at the International Conference Centre in Beijing, the government went to great lengths to ensure that attendees were impressed by China’s pollution control policies and the achievement of clear blue skies.

The sheer breadth of global public discourse that has been generated by the onset of the coronavirus is staggering!

In the days ahead, GECOM Chair, Justice (Ret’d) Claudette Singh’s integrity and commitment to  free and fair elections will be under granular scrutiny.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Alice, as she watched her feet eventually appear so far off they were almost out of sight.