Guyanese must ensure an accurate image of our country is portrayed

By Ashley Anthony On July 20, 2018, “The 20 Billion Question for Guyana” hit the New York Times. In said article, one Mr Clifford Krauss attempted to discuss the potential impact of our recent oil finds on the country. I will not address the parts of the article that delve into the impacts of oil, the parts which warn of potential mismanagement, nor even the parts which draw comparisons to other countries that have found oil in the region. These concerns raised are valid ones, and I do not think…

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Our leaders must engage each other and move the country forward

Since 1997, Guyanese at home and abroad have been calling on the country’s two main political parties to hold meaningful and genuine dialogue, which would see them resolving their ideological and philosophical differences with the aim of putting the country first. The citizenry had also supported a wave of constitutional reforms as proposed by the National Assembly in the early 2000s, as a key step towards building trust, inclusionary democracy, and political consensus among the country’s key political parties and interest groups. However, despite the best efforts of some key…

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CPL 2018: Get in the game!

Last year, patriotism, national pride and excitement ran high as thousands of Guyanese flocked the Guyana National Stadium at Providence to be part of several exciting Caribbean Premier League home matches; which no doubt had a continuing redounding positive impact on the country’s overall economic and tourism development. It must be stated from the outset, the CPL had managed also to unify a very divided Guyana, as persons from all sections of society — regardless of their race, creed, sexual orientation and political persuasion — rallied behind the so far…

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Neonatal deaths in Guyana

Last Thursday, Guyana’s Public Health Minister Volda Lawrence revealed that some 119 neonatal deaths were recorded at the Georgetown Public Hospital for the period June 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018, with 32 deaths occurring during the first quarter of 2018 alone. A neonatal death is the death of a baby within the first 28 days after birth. The minister, after being quizzed by Opposition Member of Parliament Dr Vindhya Persaud in the National Assembly, also admitted that while there has been no significant increase in the numbers of neonatal…

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Conscripted by (western) modernity

By Ravi Dev Some years ago, taking my son to write his CAPE Literature exams, he waxed enthusiastically about the poet Olive Senior, whose “Gardening in the Tropics” was an assigned text. The Jamaican, of mixed racial and cultural heritage, used the everyday West Indian activity of “gardening” as an extended trope to analyse the brutal colonisation of the Caribbean by the Europeans, and their influence in the formation of our identities. Gardening does involve “rooting out”, “discarding”, “cultivating”, “nurturing”, “grafting”, “hybridity”, and so many activities that are also at…

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“I am broken but trying to fix myself”

By Lakhram Bhagirat I have known Ricky (not real name) for over two decades and we are great friends. When I first approached him with the idea of sharing how violence in the home affects the children, he was more than willing to assist, but his mother was not that enthusiastic. So in order to preserve her identity, we have changed Ricky’s name and this is his story. “She would scream while we watched helplessly as he would cuff and kick her about her body. It became a norm because…

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Politics for new presidential aspirants

With the elimination of the presidential candidacy of the PPP’s Bharrat Jagdeo in the 2020 elections, the process for that party to name a successor has begun. It has already thrown the media into a tizzy of speculation as to who will be that person. Over in the PNC, while there has been no exogenous event like a CCJ ruling to remove the PNC’s incumbent President, David Granger, from consideration, a three-way race between three senior functionaries for the PNC’s Chairmanship suggests that Old Man Time may have whispered into…

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CARICOM

Fresh from the Caribbean Community (Caricom) Heads of Government (C-HOGS) meeting, President David Granger pronounced that the manifest failure of the regional body, founded 45 years ago, is not on account of its structure but its “bureaucracy”. Before rushing to judgement based on his perceptions over the last three years, he would have been better served if he had taken time to study the “Report of the Commission to Review Jamaica’s Relations within Caricom and CARIFORUM frameworks which was issued by that country since March 2017 and to which his…

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STEM provides many opportunities for students in Guyana

This Saturday, STEM Guyana held its annual robotics exhibition at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall. Since its formation in 2016, STEM Guyana has turned heads, perhaps most notably when Guyana’s first robotics team surged to a respectable tenth place (out of 165 teams) at the Global Robotics Challenge. STEM education in Guyana, I believe, has a far way to go. I remember being in high school and entering numerous science fairs and seeing the same projects recycled over and over winning the prizes every year. There was very little innovation,…

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Taking a tough stance against lawlessness at Guyana’s prisons

On Tuesday, the Director of the Guyana Prisons Service reported that lawmen were hunting an individual who attempted to smuggle a large quantity of narcotics, tobacco leaves, mobile phones and other contraband into the Lusignan Prison Holding Area. He said that the incident occurred in the wee hours of the morning after prison officers observed the man acting in a suspicious manner at the north-eastern section of the penitentiary’s holding area, by prison ranks. The media was told that when the ranks realised that the man was in the process…

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