Latest update April 22nd, 2026 12:49 AM
Latest News
- Wales gas plant contractor now wants US$250M more to complete project by year-end
- Appeal Court to decide on Exxon’s role in citizen’s challenge to Govt. for oil sector information
- Chinese acrobatic troupe dazzles Guyanese
- President Trump announces Iran ceasefire extension
- CCJ hears arguments on “vitriolic” bias in Mohameds’ extradition case
Attributes often used to characterise a Failed State
Dear Editor,
There is extensive academic literature on Failed States and their characteristics, including writings by scholars such as Noam Chomsky and Max Weber.
Wikipedia states that the attributes often used to characterise a Failed State are loss of physical control of its territory, erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions, an inability to provide reasonable public services and an inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community.
In addition to Failed States there is literature also on Failing States whose characteristics include a central government which cannot exercise practical control over much of its territory, non-provision of public services, sharp economic decline, refugees and involuntary movement of populations and widespread corruption and criminality.
A Failed States Index is compiled annually by the think-tank Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy Magazine. According to the 2009 list, 177 states are included of which 38 are classified as “Alert”, 93 as “Warning” and 33 as “Moderate”. Guyana is in the “Warning’’ category. Other CARICOM and neighbouring countries in that category are Brazil, Suriname, Venezuela, Belize, Jamaica, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda and The Bahamas. Global players such as China, Russia, Israel and South Africa are in the same group.
In the Kaieteur News issue of July 27th, Freddie Kissoon postulates a theory (his word) that Guyana is a failed state.
He explains in detail how backed up faeces from Georgetown toilets help lead him to this realisation. He adds, “My research into the politics of authoritarian power reveals that in Guyana there is the degeneracy where decision makers are cocooned in a labyrinthine, Sicilian and Byzantine network with dubious income-earners in which narco-trafficking is an open secret. These are the characteristics of a failed state”.
We are all incensed at the ever-lower depths to which this nation is sinking. Kissoon, our country’s foremost academician/columnist, should instruct Foreign Policy Magazine and Fund for Peace about his new and revolutionary definition of a failed state.
His knowledge and experience of Guyana’s authoritarian power and Georgetown’s plumbing defects would allow them to situate Guyana in its proper place in the Failed States Index.
Peter Van Sluytman
Share this:
Discover more from Kaieteur News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.