…about PNC politics
Unlike others in the commentary business, your Eyewitness doesn’t have a problem with PNC chair Volda Lawrence’s further explication of their new “Declaration of Sophia”. Unlike the original one enunciated by Burnham in 1974 on “Party Paramountcy over the state”, in one comprehensive statement, this time we’re getting the message in short, stattacco-like bursts. The first salvo was just before the LGE when Minister in the Ministry of the Presidency, Dawn Hastings conjured up the “PPP “killing” sons of the Sophia listeners. It was pure and unadulterated stirring of racial fears.
It continued after the LGE with the leadership of the PNC at the press conference at Congress Place, Sophia, after their trouncing at the hands of the PPP. They conceded their coalition was really a sham…and it was PNC in the saddle again. Like when Burnham threw out the UF and started rigging elections to rule on his lonesome as the “paramount” party in 1968. But with Nagamootoo at the head table, some idealists wearing rose-tinted glasses out in voterland might’ve still hoped it wasn’t PNC uber alles.
But these poor souls would’ve ignored the gross disparities in ethnic composition of the Ministers; heads of department; members of Government Boards; contract awardees; diplomats; contract employees in the OP; scholarship recipients; STEM participants; village for agricultural rehabilitation; investment programmes for Linden vs firings of sugar workers; managers of the Energy Department, etc, etc.
So it took PNC chair Volda Lawrence to be honest about the present PNC’s modus operandi. She took a page from Burnham’s message to the 1979 PNC Biennial Conference, when he criticised some members for “being more democratic than those who taught us democracy”.
He insisted the PNC party card must be the sine qua non for a job offer and those who were fired for not getting with the programme, must “stay fired”.
Speaking to the roomful of PNC faithful, Lawrence candidly described who should get jobs under the PNC regime: “The only friends I got is PNC so the only people I gon give wuk to is PNC and right now I looking for a doctor who can talk Spanish or Portuguese and ah want one that is PNC!” Now you can’t get clearer than that, can you? Whatever you may think of the policy, you have to compliment the Minister for stating what everyone knew was the policy of the PNC – then and now – but were too hypocritical to say it out in public.
Burnham ended his 1979 speech boasting that his political opponents would face his “sharper steel” so they should “write their wills”.
Who’ll be the present PNC leader to admit this is the end game once again??
…but not on giveaway
The PNC Government is hell bent on giving Brazilian investors the go-ahead on mega farms in our intermediate savannahs. That’s a bad idea for any number of reasons…but like with every other initiative they’ve undertaken, that doesn’t matter. Citizens will have to head them off at the pass like they did with those PNC-Parking Meters of Patricia Chase-Green
When the proposals were first floated, several Guyanese argued cogently against them. Firstly, there’s the major elephant in the room as to whether such development can be part of a “Green Development Strategy” the PNC has been mouthing off about. If their models from Brazil are anything to go by, these mega-farms can really be MEGA – some with more that 150,000 acres!! Then there’s the Genetically Modified corn and soya they’ll grow by polluting the groundwater with the pesticides and fertilisers that can’t run off, like on the coast.
Finally, with the Lethem-Linden Highway in the pipeline, these mega farms will be fifth columnists for a Brazil invasion!
What happened to farming for the “small man”?
…on the electoral lists
Jamaica just removed 260,000 dead persons from their voters’ list. So could Patterson please remove the 65,000 dead persons on Guyana’s voters list??Or has Felix already prepared Ids for them to vote in 2020??
