Last Saturday we (Guyana Times daily) presented the historical background to the operations of NICIL. This week, against that background, we examine some of the claims the AFC has been making. After reviewing the entire contretemps, we have concluded that the AFC has taken on NICIL as an institution to actually attack the government because the mode of operation of the former is not familiar to the average voter. NICIL is the occasion for the war; not the cause of the war. As such, the opposition’s strategy has been to…
Read MoreCategory: Editorials
Racial incitement
This newspaper does not have to remind readers of the delicate nature of race and ethnic relations in Guyana. All the stakeholders in our country agree on this point and back in the 1990’s a Race Relations Board was established and this was eventually succeeded by the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC). Whatever might have been the opinions on the actual functioning of the ERC, there is unanimity on the need for maintaining ethnic harmony. The ERC is in limbo at the moment on account of the opposition slashing its budget…
Read MoreLegislative Dictatorship
Chief Justice Ian Chang (acting) issued a decision on the case brought by the attorney general against the leader of the opposition and the Speaker of the House on the issue of the criteria for constituting the Committee of Selection (CoS). The gravamen of the government’s argument was that the Speaker and the combined opposition used its one seat majority to alter the strength of the “mother of all committees” from 10 to nine and then allocated them on a 4-4-1 basis to the PPP, APNU and AFC respectively. With…
Read More“Night of the long knives”
Back in Germany circa 1934, Adolf Hitler decided to make his final push for total, undisputed power over his country. Of course, he had already written Mein Kampf, and the extermination of six million Jews and a war to end all wars was already on his megalomaniacal mind. He became convinced that a rival group to his Nazis posed a threat to his plans. So he invited its leadership to a meeting and later announced that sixty-one of them had been executed; thirteen had been shot resisting arrest and three…
Read MoreProvocation of confrontation
In this very delicate period of our nation’s history, as the parties in the National Assembly manoeuvre through the ‘new dispensation’, there are forces determined to provoke only confrontation. They have defined the present alignment in starkly Manichean terms: the forces of good (the opposition) arrayed against the force (in this case, singular) of evil (the PPP executive). Under such a narrative, of course, there can only be one salutary, and indeed moral, outcome – the complete defeat and rout, if not extermination, of the ‘evil’ PPP executive government. The…
Read MoreMedia (against) Development
In a previous editorial – “The Media and Development” carried in our daily edition on April 15, 2012, we traced the history of our media and its role in “development”. From being an arm of the colonial state imposing a hegemony over our ideas; through the turbulent 70s when the fledgling third world states tried to seize a measure of control; to the 90s and the present with the neo-liberal order stressing private ownership and private agendas. With its overall ‘market fundamentalist’ premises, the private interests were somehow supposed to…
Read MorePlaying with fire
With the budget debate having commenced, we would like to highlight a clear and present danger that is being posed to the survival of our country because of inflammatory and opportunistic positions being taken on certain budgetary items. In most countries budgets are considered as dry and recondite matters. However, in our country because of our cleavages they can be literally incendiary because there are politicians willing to exacerbate those cleavages by claiming budgetary initiatives favour one group while sanctioning others. We will illustrate our concern with references to statements…
Read MoreBudget for the times
Acknowledging the unique political ‘dispensation’ into which the country had been delivered – which he had memorably earlier described as ‘unchartered waters’ – Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh presented the 2012 budget. Earlier, of course, there had been some skirmishing by the opposition to become part and parcel of the Budget team, but that had been firmly rebuffed by the government. This budget is therefore the government’s considered plans for dealing with the economic needs of the country in 2012. The declared theme of “Remaining on Course, United in Purpose,…
Read MoreSalaries in the public sector
There were two, not necessarily unrelated, news items published late last week in the Guyana Times daily: the call for a 25 per cent wage increase for public servants (among a host of other benefits) and the report of another policeman caught in a crime. The foregoing, placed within a general perception of widespread corruption at all levels of the various governmental services, brings to the fore the question as to whether raising the salaries of governmental workers will raise their performance while simultaneously, reducing corruption. It is generally assumed…
Read MoreCaricom must prioritise
In what was perhaps one of the most candid and revealing disclosures by a Senior Caricom official, private sector representatives and other stakeholders in Georgetown were told recently that the region will not be able to achieve a single economy, including a single currency by the 2015 deadline. This revelation was made by the Caricom Secretary General Ambassador Irwin LaRocque. “One can understand the impatience of the people of the community, the CSME was launched in 2006; one year later, we announced to the world that we would have by…
Read More