Editorial

As oil is the leitmotif of the day and the stakes and risks are stratospherically high, the government and the contenders for the March 2, 2020 general elections must be made constantly aware of what has been done, left undone and the imperatives.

In 1987, then President Desmond Hoyte introduced the Guyana Prize for Literature.

In October 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist who relentlessly exposed high level corruption in Malta, was killed by a car bomb that was triggered by a text message.

Last month some serious flaws in what might loosely be termed the disciplinary aspects of the school system were exposed.

Earlier this week, it was reported that four men were freed of rape charges, three of whom were accused of raping children, because their accusers could not be located.

A picture is worth a thousand words, according to the old adage, and this was certainly most applicable to the image which greeted West Indian cricket fans last weekend as they perused the summary of last week’s victory in the one-off Test against Afghanistan. 

The first thing that should be said about physical and/or verbal ‘retaliatory measures’ by parents against teachers perceived to have punished or otherwise wronged their children during the course of in-school interaction is that it is, under any conceivable circumstance, altogether unacceptable.

Almost 37 years after the brutal killings of 15 persons in Suriname and innumerable attempts to delay and thwart legal proceedings, President Desi Bouterse has been brought to justice over his role in this most heinous event.

We are into the season of political manifestos it seems. At least, the PPP/C’s launch of the outline of its manifesto last week might appear to suggest such.

Even with climate change and political unrest roiling the planet, a recent White House memoir, published anonymously as “A Warning”, would easily make any shortlist of the year’s most worrying news.

It was Mr Eusi Kwayana who first drew attention in a letter to the name-change on the board outside the archives on Homestretch Avenue from ‘Walter Rodney Archives’ to ‘The National Archives’.

The proverb from which this column’s headline is taken, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.

Whenever a topic of controversy comes up during mutual exchanges among adults, one on which we would not express our views or opinions, whether it be politics or racism, we more often than not sidestep the subject by mumbling some rhetorical or feeble excuse.

Quite recently, and  arising out of a random  series of brief conversations with eighteen children attending secondary schools in Georgetown and its environs, across grades ranging from seven to nine about the frequency with which they are given homework, we received a ‘not frequently’ response from fourteen of them.

On Tuesday via a joint statement from GuySuCo and the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association it was revealed that the sugar corporation has taken a decision to acquire a plant that would produce around 55,000 tonnes of white sugar per annum which would satisfy the needs of beverage producers here, other consumers of the refined sweetener and also regional demand.

While it was being suggested at one point that the coalition arrangement between APNU and the AFC might not survive into the next election, it seems that an amended Cummingsburg Accord has at length been agreed between the two parties.

The political theatre of the impeachment hearings has exposed such chaos within the White House that it was predictable that Trump would try to reframe the story.

Last week, Traffic Chief Linden Isles surprised nobody – except arguably President David Granger who may be less familiar with the data on fatal traffic accidents than the rest of us.

Not for the first time, citizens who use the Charity Wharf on a daily basis have complained about its visibly dilapidated state in the hope that it would finally get the attention it so badly deserves.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is approaching a watershed moment in its existence.