If the government of a ‘democratic’ country decides that it will not cooperate with its main political opponent it will most likely feel that it has to acquire more police. So the PPP/C’ formation of what the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance Gail Teixeira reported as the Regional Joint Support Team (RJST), is unsurprising. Aristotle said that politics is […]
Future Notes
When both the PPP in 2011 and the PNC in 2015 had the opportunity to try and develop a more cooperative political environment they deliberately did not do so, preferring instead to continue the ethnic tug-of-war as if Guyana’s history and what has taken place elsewhere, were not sufficient indications of the destructive nature of that path. Driving home last […]
I believe most of what the chairperson of the Police Service Commission (PSC) Mr. Paul Slowe had to say about his direct and telephone encounters with President Irfaan Ali in relation to the latter’s quest to get his supporters promoted by the PSC. This kind of behaviour is not uncommon: what is new, shocking and should be thoroughly investigated is […]
Mr. Aubrey Norton would have us believe that in this hour he is the man the PNC and Guyana need, and in an exclusive interview with this paper last week he gave some of his reasons for believing so and his plans for the future. It would have been helpful if he had even briefly outlined a vision of his […]
It goes without saying, particularly in an ethnically divided society such as Guyana, that if the outcome of an electoral reform process is not viewed as legitimate by the vast majority of the citizens, the outcome of any elections will be similarly tainted. Ideally, for an elections system to be considered legitimate in Guyana, at a minimum it must be […]
Only last week I argued that we should pay particular attention to the ‘substantive’ and ‘procedural’ elements of decisions, and here we have the same issue again. Be it for different reasons, both the government and the opposition claim that they are in favour of electoral reforms. In a liberal democracy, if for no other reason than that elections are […]
In relation to media freedom, the 2020 US State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Guyana states that, ‘Independent media were active and at times expressed a wide variety of views without restriction. The ruling party’s monopoly of state media creates an imbalance in public discourse and tends to give them a public affairs advantage, since the opposition […]
In Future Notes of 20 May 2020 in response to the chairperson of the Guyana Election Commission’s statement that the commission did not have the capacity to consider the illegalities and irregularities uncovered during the Caricom monitored recount process, I stated that GECOM ‘cannot logically present a legitimate winner without first taking into consideration the illegalities etc. that the coalition […]
After the worst loss in the history of the PNC in 2006, its leader and presidential candidate, Mr. Robert Corbin, became the most vilified political party leader in the history of Guyana. He was accused of being bought out by the PPP and a stooge of Bharrat Jagdeo. Yet Corbin went on to quietly reorganise the PNC and delivered the […]
There is a belief in Guyana that rigging elections is fine once your ethnic side wins them, and the Afro-Guyanese-based PNC was the poster child for rigged elections. But the PPP has lost its ethnic Indian majority and so has followed in the PNC’s footsteps. The present constitution has become unacceptable to both of the parties but rather than reforming […]
