Conversation Tree

THE QUESTION OF ELECTORAL REFORM

The question of electoral reform in its broadest sense has attracted attention. A case has been filed seeking an order that an individual can contest elections without having to be on a list of candidates. The law was passed pursuant to the constitutional reform process in 2000/2001 but regulations to effectuate it, though promised, were never made. Currently, to be a candidate,a person must be named on a list of candidates submitted by a political party or group. As regards a presidential candidate, the Constitution provides that he or she must be named as such on the list as the presidential candidate. Should this restriction on the right to run for president remain? A mixed electoral system, as recommended by the Constitution Reform Commission in 1999, was implemented for the 2001 election to provide for constituencies based on the ten Regions. The expressed intention at the time was that this temporary amendment to facilitate 2001 elections, which was due shortly, would be fully addressed more comprehensively after the elections. It never was. There is an extensive campaign for a new voters’ list, which I have supported, and biometric voting by way of fingerprints, which I have opposed.

SHOCK AND AWE!

On ‘liberation day,’ April 2, President Donald Trump announced, to the shock and awe of the world, sweeping reciprocal tariffs on the goods of most countries, bringing to an end, in one fell swoop, the era of free trade, the foremost champion of which was Adam Smith in 1776 in “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” Tariffs dominated American economic thinking and system throughout the nineteenth century but was abandoned by the major political parties in the early twentieth century after FDR’s political victories. The Trump tariffs were calculated on the basis of an unscientific economic and mathematical formula by which the US deficit with a country was divided by the value of US imports from that country and the number divided in half. For Guyana the figure was 76 percent, and the tariff imposed was 38 percent. It is higher for other countries, for example, Cambodia 49 percent, Laos 48 percent, Vietnam 46 percent and Lesotho 50 percent.

THE US, CHINA AND GUYANA’S BORDERS

Venezuela’s aggression towards Guyana now poses an existential threat to Guyana’s survival as a nation state. If Essequibo is taken over by Venezuela, Guyana becomes a rump state with its western border on the eastern bank of the Essequibo River. Guyana will have no mineral wealth, no oil production, a large portion of its rich agricultural land lost and flailing on the international scene trying to dislodge Venezuela from two-thirds of our territory. The Guyanese people of Essequibo and in Regions 1, 2, 7, 8 and 9 will be living under the boots of the Venezuelan occupying army subject to suppression, imprisonment, torture and death.

THE VISIT OF US SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO

Guyana welcomes US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Apart from relations with Caricom in relation to energy security, illegal immigration and criminal networks as defined by US Assistant Secretary of State Mauricio Claver-Carone, the issues of importance in Guyana’s relations with the US are Venezuela, China and Cuba.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF DESCENDANTS OF THE BRITISH

A letter in Stabroek News by Keith Bernard entitled “The British – and Durch – descended populations historiography seems to have been drowned out by larger ethnic narratives” caught my attention yesterday morning. One of the most prominent professional institutions that have emerged from Guyana’s colonial history is the law firm of Cameron & Shepherd which was established by two British solicitors William Stuart Cameron and Charles Edward Shepherd and whose Senior Partner up to 2006 was Joseph Arthur King, popularly known as “Joey King,” whose great grandparents were British.