…of ADD in Guyana
It’s clear this PNC-led coalition government believe Guyanese are stricken with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Why else would they make so many promises that they haven’t kept, even though they’ve been in office for almost three years?? Do they think folks will forget?
We could start with the 21 promises they insisted they’d implement within their first 21 days. How about: “Within 3 months, appoint a Constitutional Reform Commission to amend the Constitution”?? Hope you weren’t holding your breath!!
Then there was that “Code of Conduct…for Parliamentarians, Ministers etc…” Wasn’t this one supposed to lead to the dawning of a new age of corruption-free governance?? But even after Jubileegate; Pharmagate; Parking meter-gate…etc…there are no signs of a Code.
But it’s not just the grand promises on national matters. This Government even welsh on the concrete, humdrum promises that just can’t possibly be forgotten, since they affect the lives of real, live people.
Just take the one revealed yesterday – the backdam road from Wales to Uitvlugt to transport the cane of private cane farmers after they unilaterally closed down Wales Estate.
Now, these farmers were a special set of people who accepted the challenge from the sugar producers back in the day to produce sugar cane privately. They were so successful, they ended up supplying 40% of the cane to Wales – because they were so much more efficient than the estate operations.
GuySuCo was unsuccessful because it just couldn’t get its act together – especially in the fields. And interestingly, the Wales farmers had the solution. You’d think that rather than shuttering the factory and its 8000 acres, GuySuCo would’ve passed on the lands to the farmers to have a go, and keep the factory. But the geniuses on the Board ignored their CoI, shut down the factory, and promised to lease the lands to the workers to diversify, while they would construct a road to transport the farmers’ cane to Uitvlugt factory.
But here we are, no road, and the cane farmers left with their cane to rot! Their stories are heartrending: fractured families; fractured communities; fractured lives. The lands to be leased and diversified? You’re a real true believer if you asked, dear reader!
The Government, on its own, put 400 acres into “seed paddy,” but we’re yet to hear officially about the disaster that was!! This Eyewitness will bet dollars to donuts that if they’d leased those lands to farmers, seed paddy would’ve been coming out of their kazoos!!
But that would mean the Government keeping even 1% of their promise!! In 2010, however, they’ll find out Guyanese don’t have ADD: They’ll know where to place their “X” sign!!
…of Guyanese politics
The WPA’s ‘all shook up’ about the treatment accorded to its Executive member David Hinds by its partners in Government – the PNC and AFC. In case you were vacationing on Mars during the past week, Hinds’s column was dropped from the state-owned Chronic faster than a shooting star!! And with as little warning!!
Your Eyewitness dealt with who did the (dirty) deed in his last column, so today he’ll examine the WPA’s misreading of the political calculus. Very bluntly, their usefulness is over. Their role was to sanitise the PNC in 2011 to the well-meaning Afro and Mixed constituencies who’d become disillusioned with that party’s “goon” image. By 2015, their job was done, and the PNC moved on to court the AFC’s 10% Indian support.
With the PNC back in the saddle and the avuncular Granger riding high, the WPA is redundant, since, in a bifurcated polity, the PNC vote won’t be “split”!! The latter should expect more humiliations.
It’ll be cold comfort that it’ll soon be the turn of the AFC to be ditched!!
…of the Gilbakka ban
The Govt wasn’t lax…it was a strategic move to allow the cuirass stock to increase, and tempt the Venezuelans to catch one.
That’d give us the excuse to declare war to protect Exxon’s oil. Not one cuirass!!
