The agreement by Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, after being pressured by the emissary of President-elect Trump, Steve Witkoff, was proposed since last May and approved by Hamas in July. After Hamas’s acceptance of the terms, Prime Minister of Israel Netanyahu added new conditions. The discussions fell apart, with US Secretary of State Blinken blatantly lying by blaming Hamas for the failure, while tens of thousands of additional Gazan lives, mostly those women and children, were lost to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing. The signing of this agreement with substantially the same terms as that of last May demonstrate that Israel is indeed susceptible to American pressure, as demonstrated in the past. Throughout the 15-month genocide on Gaza by Israel, President Joe Biden, adamantly refused to apply any pressure on Israel, while Netanyahu repeatedly humiliated Biden by violating red line after red line set by him and in his ludicrous defence, leaked stories to the press about how angry he was with Netanyahu as Netanyahu thumbed his nose at him, again and again. Biden dutifully sated his Zionist cravings by sending more and more arms, including 2,000-pound bombs to be dropped on civilians, in complicity with the carnage.
Continue reading “THE END OF THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA?”IS THERE AN OPPOSITION COALITION IN THE WORKS?
The Peoples National Congress (PNC), Alliance for Change (AFC) and Working Peoples Alliance (WPA) recently announced that they will be meeting to discuss the establishment of a coalition for the purpose of contesting the upcoming regional and general elections to be held by November this year. Only recently, these parties were part of the coalition, APNU+AFC, (the WPA was part of APNU), which won the elections by one seat in 2015. The APNU+AFC coalition was built around the Cummingsburg Accord which was signed by APNU and AFC on February 14, 2015. Its primary objective was the distribution of ministries and parliamentary seats among the parties in the event that APNU+AFC won the elections. APNU+AFC felt confident at outcome of the elections the time because, with the AFC, it held a one seat majority in the National Assembly over the PPP/C minority Government.In order to be able to form the government the APNU and AFC were forced into the coalition because the constitution did not allow a post-election coalition with a majority of seats to form the government.
Continue reading “IS THERE AN OPPOSITION COALITION IN THE WORKS?”JAGAN’S LETTER TO GORBACHEV
In commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the PPP, I write about a little known event that formed part of the circumstances that shaped Guyana’s entry into the democratic fold of nations.
Continue reading “JAGAN’S LETTER TO GORBACHEV”A TRANSFORMATIVE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT
With only minimal fanfare and little public notice, the National Assembly last week unanimously passed into law the Security Interests in Movable Property Bill 2024. The statutory protection of a credit system over immovable property has long been an aspiration of many who are and were involved in the financial industry. The need became evident as early as the late 1980s as Guyana’s economy began to look to external sources for economic development. By the early 1990s the Government invited a Canadian lawyer who was stationed in Guyana for several months, at intervals, who prepared draft legislation. It then silently vanished, never to be heard of again.
Continue reading “A TRANSFORMATIVE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT”A PROPOSAL TO RESTORE JONESTOWN
Jonestown is once again in the news and is attracting widespread and serious comment. This article, from the paragraph below, was written by Roger Arjoon, a Guyanese, who lives and works in the financial industry in New York. He attended Yale and Oxford Universities and is a Rhodes Scholar. He continues to take an active interest in Guyana. I had this article in my archives, took it out, dusted it off, reduced its size and obtained Roger’s permission to publish it. It was first published on July 25, 2013, and is still very much relevant having regard to the issues being publicly debated. The impact of the lack of democracy in Guyana at the time, and how it facilitated the tragedy in Jonestown, is still to be explored.
Continue reading “A PROPOSAL TO RESTORE JONESTOWN”