Editorial

In a recent exchange on the fate of liberal democracy, British historian Niall Ferguson and the Canadian scholar-politician Michael Ignatieff offered almost diametrically opposed views of the short-term political future.

We have had Mao’s Little Red Book, Gadaffi’s Little Green Book, and metaphorically speaking, the Little Black Book. 

On Sunday last, in this newspaper’s column ‘Women’s Chronicles’ under the headline “Madness in Mahdia”, a young woman related experiences that could only be deemed frightening and completely reprehensible.

At a gathering of friends, lively exchanges of views and opinions on the topics of the day, whether it is politics, oil revenues, tax laws or the impacts of social media, are a guaranteed part of the proceedings.

Just before the close of schools in December an announcement was made to the effect that a ban was being placed on the customary in-school Christmas ‘bash’ euphemistically referred to as a Christmas Party and that a much less rumbustious event, a sort of ‘social,’ as events of that nature are described, where music would be limited to the singing of Christmas Carols and where social intercourse would be confined to the uniformed teenagers exchanging seasonal pleasantries would be held.

An 11-point declaration by the Ministry of Public Health garnered viral status on social media on Friday after its mainly innocuous asseverations were headlined by a Christian invocation.

At the dawn of what was both a new year and a new decade, President David Granger delivered the head of state’s customary address to the nation.

Less than a week into the new decade, monsoon rains and overflowing rivers have flooded nearly 200 Jakartan neighbourhoods claiming dozens of lives and displacing nearly 400,000 Indonesians.

The odds are that the mass of the population, located as it is on the coastland, paid little attention to the observances in relation to the Inter-national Year of Indigenous Languages, which concluded on December 31, 2019.

Twenty years ago today, at the stroke of midnight, the turn of the century, world leaders braced themselves for the start of potential chaos within their borders.

Even the most far-seeing of soothsayers might have been disinclined to risk their reputations on venturing a prediction on the condition in which Guyana would find itself going into the third decade of the twenty first century.

Almost immediately after it entered office in May, 2015 the APNU+AFC government was the beneficiary of the mind-boggling announcements about the vast reserves of oil that had been discovered by ExxonMobil and its affiliates in the offshore Stabroek Block.

What a difference a year makes.  A little over twelve months ago the government lost a no-confidence vote in Parliament.

In 2016 the Oxford English Dictionary’s editors chose ‘post-truth’ — which edged out ‘Brexit’ and ‘alt-right’ — as their word of the year.

A little over a year ago Mr Juan Guaidó declared himself president of Venezuela on the grounds that the 2018 election had been rigged by President Nicolás Maduro.

Last Wednesday, as the West Indies players adorned black arm bands for the Second ODI against India, in tribute to the passing of a member of the formidable 1960s’ West Indians, it is quite probable they asked themselves, ‘Who was this batsman from back-in-the-day the older folks are always talking about?’

Perhaps the most interesting feature of Guyana’s agro-processing sector is the way in which the contemporary practice links the present to the past in ‘processing’ agricultural produce to produce a range of food seasonings and condiments that are an integral part of what we eat.

While the advent of first oil holds great promise for the development of the country and its people, it is at the same a stark reminder of how  much has gone wrong and is going wrong with the administration of the sector.

Last week we reported that fourteen new parties had applied to Gecom for symbols to contest the 2020 general and regional elections.

The dramatic vote that made Donald Trump the third US leader, and the only first-term president, to be impeached has disclosed more about Washington’s current dysfunctions than a shelf of political memoirs.