Editorial

Our fractured political system has militated against governments taking a robust stance against corruption.

On July 14th, 1789, the first day of the French Revolution, Louis XVI’s diary entry was the single word: “rien” because he had shot nothing in his daily hunt.

In early December last year we published a letter from artist Ms Bernadette Persaud who said that a few weeks previously the site of the Chateau Margot chimney had been closed off to the public and that the gates now carried two notices.

Up to late last week, the families affected by the collapse of a section of range houses in East La Penitence were still marking time.

As we go about our daily lives we are required to make a series of choices, many of which are trivial in nature with little long-term consequences, while the more difficult ones, such as career pursuits, family decisions and retirement planning, to name a few, require serious thought.

On Thursday last, at the Annual Police Officers’ Conference, President David Granger returned to the now patently familiar theme of police reform, outlining elements of his vision for the Guyana Police Force, going forward.

A January 29th 2020 letter from anti-corruption watchdog, Global Witness to ExxonMobil’s Country Manager has quantified the likely loss to Guyana from the disastrous 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) at a whopping US$55b.

It is perhaps surprising why it hasn’t happened before. Former murder accused Cloyd Harris recently filed a $100 million lawsuit against the state for loss of liberty after spending six years on remand without trial.

As the impeachment trial in the US Senate heads towards a partisan anticlimax, the intellectual debasements of the Trump era have plumbed new depths.

On Wednesday a letter was pinned up on the notice board of the Rusal-owned Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) informing 146 workers whose names were listed that they had been laid off.

On Thursday and Friday last week, two women were violently attacked in their homes by men wielding sharp instruments; one was killed and the other critically injured, adding to the ever-growing statistics of Guyanese women killed or affected by domestic violence.

On Sunday, the sporting world received the shocking news that basketball icon, former Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant, along with his thirteen year old daughter, Gianna, and seven other people, had died in a helicopter crash, Calabasas, California.

The Ministry of Education’s run of ‘bad form’ persists The protracted run of ‘bad form’ which our education system has been facing was alarmingly extended last week with the horrendous stabbing of a schoolgirl in Linden, during the course of an out-of-school fight in which the attacker allegedly intervened on behalf of the injured child’s opponent.

The only positive attribute of the thoughtless and irresponsible call of the PNCR Chair, Volda Lawrence for the governing coalition’s supporters to work the ‘night shift’ outside of polling stations is that it has now crystallised great interest in security arrangements for March 2nd.

There has been no election prior to this one when there has been so much talk of constitutional reform, and in the case of some of the parties, specifically of shared governance. 

The International Court of Justice’s Thursday ruling against Myanmar is a legal triumph.

On the evening of Election Day, May 11, 2015, an angry mob gathered at the home of Mr Narine Khublall in Sophia shouting that ballot boxes were in the PPP/C command centre which was located there.

Two reports published in this newspaper over the past seven days demonstrate the stagnation in thought that hinders progress.

The preliminary conclusions of a French Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (COI) released in late November, 2019, have found that the state is “the first person responsible” for the Chlordecone pollution on the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

So the Ministry of Education has finally verbalized a commitment to supporting   teachers who come under in-school attacks by parents.