…for Guyanese morality
Your Eyewitness believes that the Guyanese people really have to draw a line in the sand on this “gifting” scandal. This should not come down to partisan loyalty. If it does, we might as well pack up our bags and return to that state of nature where life was “nasty, brutish and short”. Let’s unpack this mess one more time, since by sticking to Patterson’s flip-flopping defence, Joseph Harmon, the Leader of the Opposition (the LOO, as the PNC would say!) is saying that the supporters of the coalition really want to go that route. Your Eyewitness doesn’t think so.
Patterson at first absolutely and categorically denied that he received the half-a-million-dollar gold bracelet. Then, after he was shown definitive proof that he had in fact accepted it for his birthday, he then threw one of his staff under the bus. He said he doesn’t deal with financial matters!! And this is what your Eyewitness wants our LOO, Mr Harmon, to deal with frontally. Whatever the PPP might or might not have done in the past, present or future on accepting gifts, does he condone a former Minister of his Government lying to the Guyanese people??
In our long trek from the “nasty, brutish and short” life in the state of nature, we invented mechanisms of government so that we could go on with our lives and sleep at night, because we could trust those we put in charge to do the right thing. And these are respectively the Government, led by the President, and the “Loyal” Opposition (the LO), led by the LOO. The LO is the government in waiting, since, for instance, with just the passing of a No Confidence Motion (NCM), the Government can fall. As such, the LOO must hold himself and the rest of his party to the very highest standards of morality and probity.
The LOO must ask himself, “Does each and every one of the members of my LO expect me to be there to tell them that accepting a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bracelet – bought by taxpayers’ money – is a betrayal of the people’s trust”? Wasn’t the LOO himself caught in a similar fix when a pic of his being transported around China in a private jet circulated some time ago?
At that time, Raphael Trotman, co-leader of Patterson’s party, admitted, “Let us be real, of course, they say pictures tell a thousand words…there are levels of comfort and levels of discomfort, and I think the picture by itself is a very uncomfortable one to look at.” Doesn’t the LOO feel even a smidgen of discomfort in seeing pics of Patterson with the bling on his wrist after thrice denying receiving it?
Patterson must go!
…of PNC’s City Hall
The people who live in, or have to enter, Georgetown gotta be echoing Henry II and screaming, “Will no one rid us of this troublesome Mayorality?” After more than two decades of putting up with PNC-Mayors and City Councils, don’t the citizens of our once “Garden City” demand some kind of accountability and performance?
All the new Local Government Minister is asking is that a “forensic audit” be done on the finances of City Hall. These finances come from rates and taxes paid by city residents. Out of their pockets!! Don’t they want to know where those dollars are going? They know for sure it ain’t going towards providing services for them!! Don’t they want to know how come so many PNC insiders at City Hall became so filthy rich in just the last five years?
Do they remember that Big One who bought that $30 million house in Happy Acres? He’s certainly living happily right now.
Does it have to be “ever after”?
…for Guyana
Maduro really takes his eyes to pass us Guyanese. Not only has he seized our fishermen and their boats while they were in our waters, he’s now holding them in jail after a mock “trial”.
We should expel the Venezuelan Ambassador!
