Category: Editorials

There is a generation of people, mostly the younger, who are completely different from the preceding one. A lot of today’s people are living in the digital age. Technology has become a way of life and people today just automatically absorb all things automated. Now it is nigh impossible for many to imagine a world that existed without all of the gadgets, electronics and numberless operations that computer technology provides. Children now devote some 40 hours per week to television, video games and the Internet. Researchers are very concerned about…

Read More

It would appear that the department in the Health Ministry that had been tasked with the responsibility for tackling the scourge of suicide in Guyana has itself committed suicide. While Guyana always had a very high rate of suicide, after some sensitisation and studies on the issue at the turn of the century showed conclusively that Guyana had a consistent rate of around 200 (or 25 per 100,000) self−inflicted deaths annually, the Health Ministry gradually became involved. A preponderant number of those persons were males from the rural, Indian-Guyanese communities.…

Read More

A week ago, the film, “12 years a slave” won the Best Picture award at the Hollywood Academy Awards – the highest accolade in the industry and one that will guarantee the film cinematic. But it will do more than that: it will for the very first time, tell the story of a slave from the point of view of the slave. Solomon Northup was a free citizen of New York who had been sold into slavery in Louisana and endured the 12 years of slavery, he wrote of in…

Read More

The update by the Foreign Affairs Minister, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Guyana and Brazil on proposed infrastructural development should serve as a timely reminder to our political leadership that they have to arrive at some sort of “terms of engagement” sooner rather than later. The gridlock over the passage of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AMLCFT) Bill has exposed a debilitating partisanship resulting in our developmental drive stagnating. Every financial institution, from the World Bank to the Caribbean Development Bank, has…

Read More

As we recover from the Mash revelry after the long weekend, perchance we may turn our thoughts to what we can do to really make our republican dream of a self-reliant and self-assured people become real. Or of course, we may choose to begin planning for the next big bash, which we can market for tourists to watch how “the natives” cavort with great abandon. Much as the Trinidadians will be doing this coming weekend, with their Carnival extravaganza. But we should take note that even though one invited foreign…

Read More

When the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) met last week, some very important points were brought up for discussion and consideration in relation to the development path Guyana should take. This approach being taken by the administration seeks to involve all the relevant stakeholders as part of the national development dialogue. Government alone cannot, and should not, be left to decide national development policies and how they must be implemented. The private sector, which is considered the engine of growth, must be encouraged to have an input. The NCC is the…

Read More

Even though the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) might be imposing sanctions on us for not complying with their directives on controlling our financial flows that might possibly be used for money laundering or the financing of terrorism, we are really in the backwaters of world finance when it comes to “real” money. And at this time it might just be a blessing. With the financial system of most countries liberalised during the last three decades, under the ministrations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its “Washington Consensus” free…

Read More

In any democracy citizens expect public institutions to be transparent and accountable. Hence, institutions such as the parliament, government ministries, the courts, law enforcement agencies etc. must always strive to engage the various stakeholders in the society as to how they can be more open, transparent and accessible to the public. Too many times, public institutions operate with a high degree of secrecy and away from public scrutiny. The end result is that, in addition to ordinary citizens being denied an opportunity to direct probing questions to those in authority,…

Read More

The 10th Parliament will go down in our history as the “Chopping” Parliament: nothing like the other specifically named “Long Parliament” of the 17th century. There is no sign of any political geniuses in the opposition benches, which have allowed their control of the National Assembly by a single seat to go to their heads. Rather than performing their constitutionally defined role to scrutinise the operations of the executive, they have embarked on a foolhardy mission to unilaterally extend their powers into the executive domain. They have, for instance, insisted…

Read More

The Caribbean has historically been an area that has both benefitted and suffered from migration: most of its present population were brought in from outside the region to provide labour on plantations after the indigenous peoples were decimated or wiped out. With the severe level of underdevelopment imposed by the colonial powers, from the 20th century, outward migration provided a vent for the seething masses. While there was some inter-territorial migration, especially from the smaller islands into more prosperous territories like Trinidad and Tobago, in the main, the flow of…

Read More