In the aftermath of the latest conflagration at the Camp Street Prison, there are once again calls for “prison reform” — this time, bound by the exigency of having to either replace the structures that were completely razed. However, these calls cannot be addressed in isolation and outside the need for broader criminal justice reform. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) advises, “It is of utmost importance that prison reform is not regarded in isolation from broader criminal justice reform. UNODC believes that effective prison reform is dependent…
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Skewed policies in a new socio-political paradigm
Overtly, Guyana currently has a new socio-political paradigm being promoted and seemingly aspired to by Government functionaries, with ‘social cohesion’ being one of the primary planks on which the coalition A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) campaigned pre-election in 2011 and 2015. Subsequent to their attaining office, however, a new reality has been discerned, which is the discernment of a seemingly rampant vendetta against perceived People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) supporters, especially in the entrepreneurial– socio-economic sectors, tantamount to economic genocide. Without considering – seemingly without caring, about the…
Read MoreIndigenous Lands
Even as President David Granger attempted to defuse the outrage of the Indigenous Peoples to his arbitrary decision to link their land rights in Guyana to land titling issues faced by African Guyanese, the lawyer who was hired to play leading technical role in drafting the 2006 Amerindian Act has now thrown a monkey wrench into a possible consensus by declaring that “Indigenous Peoples” is a controversial and very divisive concept, and land claims made on that basis are somehow undermined. She claims the UN has debated the use of…
Read MoreGuyana’s Sovereign Wealth Fund
During the debate on the “Petroleum Commission of Guyana Bill 2017”, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo suggested that on the proposed Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) the Government had proposed for the petroleum revenues that are expected to start flowing from 2020, they should follow the example of Norway rather than our neighbour Trinidad and Tobago. During the last election campaign, the People’s Progressive Party has already suggested a SWF. The suggestion seems to have struck a raw nerve in Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman, who burst out: ““How dare you lecture…
Read MoreThat Oil Contract
The adamant refusal of the PNC-led APNU/AFC coalition to release details of the oil production contract it negotiated with the ExxonMobil-led consortium is more than troubling; it is frightening. This obdurate stance comes in the face of calls by a wide swathe of civil society organisations – including the local Transparency International (TI) body and the Guyana Bar Association (GBA) – and not only the Political Opposition, the PPP, but a member of the coalition body that makes up APNU – the WPA. At a minimum, one can say the…
Read MoreDecriminalising same sex relations
On a weekend that saw the election of an openly gay son of an immigrant as the head of the ruling Fine Gael party of Catholic Ireland – and so in line to be confirmed as Prime Minister when their Parliament reconvenes on June 13, Guyana’s LGBT community remains in a quandary about their right to engage in same sex relations. For over a decade, the discriminatory nature of laws falling under “offences against Morality”, such as: “Everyone who commits buggery… shall be guilty of felony and liable to imprisonment…
Read MoreA national debate on sugar
It is quite unfortunate that in spite of the mounting calls for the coalition Government to reconsider its decision to downscale the sugar industry via closure of sugar estates, the Administration seems unmoved and is bent on moving in a direction that will see thousands of workers and their families being severely affected. On May 8, Agriculture Minister Noel Holder presented Government’s ‘white paper’ on the future of the sugar industry to the National Assembly. He had announced that two sugar estates would be closed and the annual production of…
Read MoreImpeaching a President
While there were murmurs about “impeaching” Donald Trump from almost the moment he was sworn in on January 20, few expected the proposal would be raised in the House of Congress as early as it did – yesterday. Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas justified his call because he claimed President Trump had “obstructed justice”. He was referring to a memo sent by Trump to then FBI Director James Comey, to drop the agency’s investigation into Mike Flynn, for not disclosing his contacts with a Russian diplomat at his confirmation…
Read MoreThe French Government
The French presidential elections last week grabbed world attention primarily because it was seen as a sign of how extensive the move towards “populism” – read “right wing” sentiment –was in Europe, after the Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Donald Trump in the US. Now that Emmanuel Macron’s one-year-old En Marche! Party has defeated Marine Le Pen of the National Front (FN), the analysts will be generally consumed by the implications for EU unity and the terms of Britain’s exit as well as the facticity of Le…
Read MoreTake the economy seriously
A half-year ago, repeating the need for a governmental stimulus of the economy, we discussed in this space the latter’s evident choice between “guns and butter”. The phrase “guns or butter” entered the lexicon as a trope for signalling the tendency of some political leaders to focus their energies and their nation’s spending on the military (guns), rather than on the needs of the civilian population (butter). The Nazi-militarised Government was particularly fond of the phrase, as its officials scoffed at the production of “butter”. It entered economics as the…
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