Year: 2018

Jonestown: 40 years on

TIMES INT'L

November 18, 2018 will mark 40 years since the infamous Jonestown mass murder-suicide deep in the jungles of Guyana. In that month of 1978, a majority of Guyanese were greeted with the grim news that over 900 American citizens lay dead, children included, after ingesting cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, either voluntary or forcibly. To say it was shocking would be a gross understatement. Many locals were not even aware that the Jonestown-based People’s Temple existed on home soil. As they learnt about it, so did millions across the world, generally beyond the…

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PPP makes inroads in Georgetown, cops 7 seats

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The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) results show that the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) has taken Georgetown, with Mayor Patricia Chase Green’s constituency solidly supporting her. But the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has showed improved gains in the city, compared to 2016. At a press conference on Tuesday, Returning Officer for Georgetown Duarte Hetsberger announced that APNU would hold the majority on the City Council. APNU got a total of 18,127 votes. This time, however, the PPP has significantly more seats on the Council than before and is second…

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Lifting the veil…

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…on PNC’s voting focus The PNC – still using the fig leaf name “APNU” – had its last rally in Georgetown to fire up its supporters for Monday’s LGE. They beat the bushes with all the ingenuity they could muster (cheap Banks was the clincher for the usual Stabroek Market lumpentariat!) and managed to attract some four hundred bodies. It’s clear that David Granger had been scheduled to address the faithful, but with him stuck in Cuba dealing with his (unrevealed) illness, the party made an interesting choice for its…

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Remembrance Day – honoring fallen heroes

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Throughout our school lives, we were told that Remembrance Day, or Poppy Day as it is commonly known, is observed on the second Sunday of November to pay homage to the lives lost during World Wars I and II. Today, November 11, is the second Sunday and it is also a very special day since it marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. In Guyana, the day is observed with a whole host of activities organised by the Guyana Veterans Legion as well as the annual…

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LGE process was smooth – EU Ambassador

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…observes no provisions for differently abled Ambassador of the European Union to Guyana, Jernej Videtič, who was an observer at this year’s Local Government Elections (LGE) says the process was a smooth one and all procedures were well organised. This was related after he would have visited some of the polling stations across Guyana to check upon the pace at which ballots were cast. He noted that he would have stood as an observer two years ago during the previous LGE, but the method was “excellent” this time around. “We…

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Roy Heath: Man Come Home

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With the publication of her singular book, Aftermath of Empire: The Novels of A. K. Heath, Ameena Gafoor has sort of brought Roy Heath back home to his birthplace to be re-discovered, to be reappraised and to be re-appreciated, in a way rescuing him from self-imposed exile and also rescuing his work from obscurity (limited critical response) because Gafoor in this seminal publication was able to place Heath among the forefront of Guyanese Literature (his oeuvre of nine novels is only surpassed by Edgar Mittelholzer and Wilson Harris) by painstakingly…

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“I was willing to lay down my life for my country”

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By Lakhram Bhagirat “I was young back then and I was very vibrant. I would have done anything for my country and that is what made me go to join the Army and then went to enlist to fight in World War II. But when we were at the airport, them call and said to go back to Base, that the war is off. I was willing to lay down my life for my country because that is what was expected of me,” Benjamin Durant tells me. Although he never…

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Trotman leads high-level team to UK to lobby for lifting of ban on Greenheart

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A Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) high-level delegation led by the subject Minister Raphael Trotman and including Guyana Forestry Commission’s Chairman of the Board, Joslyn Dow, EU-FLEGT Secretariat Head, Kenny David and GFC Deputy Commissioner, Gavin Agard among others, will be travelling from Guyana to the United Kingdom (UK) from November 19-21, 2018 to facilitate discussions on the complete lifting of a procurement ban on greenheart from Guyana to the UK. The ban which was introduced by the Environmental Agency (EA) in the UK in 2015, claimed that proof of…

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LGE 2018: Massive wins for PPP countrywide

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Despite some challenges at some Local Authority Areas (LAAs), People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo said on Tuesday his party still managed to prevail during the 2018 Local Government Elections (LGE), securing massive wins countrywide with more than 45,000 votes than the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) combined. Speaking at the Party’s headquarters at Freedom House, Jagdeo said he is very happy with the results in spite of the many efforts by the APNU/AFC Administration to prevent the Party from making…

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Democratic systems must also safeguard the rights of minorities

TIMES INT'L

Dear Editor, Democracy, it is often said, is the governing of society by a majority mandate. However, this is only partly true, it is much more than that. The democratic system must also safeguard the rights of the minorities as it does the rights of the majority. Minority here is used broadly to include those in the minority as to opinion. To do so, society has developed various institutions to ensure that the law is applied equitable and that fundamental human rights are protected, upheld, and promoted. All democratic societies…

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