THE Department of Government and International Affairs, University of Guyana, must be commended for hosting the first ever presidential debate at the George Walcott Large Lecture Theatre. This is good for the political health of this country whereby those seeking political office interface with the academic and wider community regarding their vision for a better Guyana.
My only concern is what appeared to be an orchestrated attempt by some people in the audience to disrupt the activity by way of manifest expressions of biases based on their own political preferences which has nothing to do with substance or content of the presentations, but everything to do with scoring cheap political points.
This does not speak well of the University and the entire campus community. One would have thought that as academics and budding academics there would have been higher levels of tolerance for diversity of views on the way forward for Guyana.  This from all indications was not the case as participants showed a clear preference for one candidate over the others even before the debates actually commenced.
The organisers of the debate need to put in place measures to avoid such a recurrence which is not only counterproductive, but negates the value such debates are expected to generate.