GUYANA’S PROBLEMS CAN ONLY BE RESOLVED BY DEMOCRATIC MEANS

Written by Ralph Ramkarran
Saturday, 18th March 2023, 9:00 pm

During the 2020 events surrounding the attempts by APNU+AFC to rig the elections, the idea arose that the dominant issue was not elections but a political solution. It was suggested that efforts ought to be concentrated on persuading the APNU+AFC Government and the PPP to resolve the electoral crisis by establishing a power sharing government. In the absence of a formula determined by a popular mandate, it was not known at that time in what proportion each party, and maybe others, would share the government. That alone would have been a deal breaker. But a more fundamental issue arose. No one that I knew, including many who were not PPP supporters, were willing to allow a dictatorship based on fraudulent elections to once again emerge to haunt Guyana, perhaps for decades to come. The sentiment appeared to be: democracy first, shared government after.

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POLITICS AND THE JOINT SERVICES

Written by Ralph Ramkarran
Saturday, 11th March 2023, 9:00 pm

In a statement yesterday, the Chairman of the Joint Services, Brigadier Godfrey Bess, reminded citizens of Guyana that, irrespective of its ethnic composition, the Joint Services of Guyana is an apolitical institution and will continue to serve the people of Guyana. The Chairman said that the Joint Services is guided by the Constitution and not by any “partisan values and interests.” Brigadier urged “social activists and commentators to refrain from misleading and mischievous remarks which incite racial tensions.” Stabroek News remarked that it is “unclear what exactly triggered the statement today.

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RIOT ACT

Written by Ralph Ramkarran
Saturday, 4th March 2023, 9:00 pm

Guyana has the second highest rate of suicide in the world, a higher rate of death by violence than Mexico and is at 63rd place out of 183 countries in death by road accidents. These figures are based on per thousand of population and are provided by the World Health Organisation for 2020. There is only an occasional voice of concern raised about suicides. There are no horror stories about death by violence in Guyana, as there is in Mexico.

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THE BLOWING UP OF THE NORD STREAM PIPELINES

Written by Ralph Ramkarran
Saturday, 25th February 2023, 9:00 pm

Seymour Hersh is a prominent US investigative, Pulitzer Prize winning, journalist. He has claimed in a recently, self-published, article on Substack, “How America took out the Nord Stream Pipeline,” that US Navy divers destroyed three of four Russian gas Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea last September in a CIA operation ordered by President Joe Biden. The White House described the report as “false and complete fiction.”

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NOW WHO IS CHERRY-PICKING?

Written by Ralph Ramkarran
Saturday, 18th February 2023, 9:00 pm

The question is really very simple: Will the PPP/C propose inclusive governance in the constitutional reform process that is due to commence this year, as promised in its 2020 Manifesto? This is the question I asked in my article two weeks ago – “Constitutional Reform and the 2023 Budget.” The Attorney General, the Hon. Anil Nandlall, sought to answer the question in a response printed by the SN on 13 February, in the way that lawyers sometimes do – evade the subject by focusing on a tangential issue.

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