Here we are, at the end of February, and the fallout from the budget debate is still reverberating in the body politic. Imagine what’ll happen when we get to the Ides of March!! But if there’s one silver lining behind that dark cloud in the hallowed halls of Parliament, it’s that this is one of the first debates since the fall of the PNC in 1992 that have grabbed the attention of the populace so firmly! During the Burnham years, all Guyana used to be glued anxiously to their radios during budget debates (there was no TV) to hear what new taxes were being imposed!
Another positive development has been the responses from some of the panned Parliamentarians who penned letters to the press explaining their positions. Not enough…but some. So, we’re making progress!
None, however, from either side of the House has been bold enough to explain their gender-based attempts at “humour”. Or, as we say, to “tantalise”. The act that elicited the greatest adverse comments was from a doctor/MO who’d brandished a dildo to make a point about the ineptness of the PNC.
Your Eyewitness had assumed – as evidently most commentators had – that the use of the dildo was gratuitously for dramatic effect, but he has now been informed via a letter in the press that a dildo was actually bought! Wrote the good doctor/MP: “The rehabilitation department of the Ministry of Health, this time Centrally, at around 2017, requested a piece of equipment to assist with persons having lung problems. That piece of equipment can be useful to persons with lung and breathing issues, especially the bed-ridden and CVA/Stroke patients. The request was made for a “MECHANICAL CHEST VIBRATOR” – a vibrating machine/equipment that is placed flat on the chest area to stimulate the lungs. The then Ministry of Public Health bought a vibrating DILDO instead! For the Rehab Dept to use on the patients!”
The doctor/MP concluded by asking a question of the condemnatory public: “Can you imagine the consternation of the Rehab staff? Unto today when they speak of it you can hear the disgust in their voices.” Your Eyewitness can certainly empathise with the medical staff. Here they have a patient experiencing a life-threatening stroke and they’re supposed to use a dildo to resuscitate him/her?
Then there’s the issue of dildos being banned in Guyana, with the doctor/MP questioned as to how he was able to get the one he swung in Parliament; the implication being he must’ve used his privilege to get it past customs. Well, shouldn’t that question be now directed at the personnel who brought in the one for the MoH Rehabilitation Department?
…vaccines
Seeing the news that India is providing 80,000 COVID-19 vaccines, your Eyewitness channelled the Rev Dr Martin Luther King and thundered, “I have been to the mountain and have seen the promised land!” The land, that is, of not trying to change what Aristotle had perceived more than two millennia ago: we’re essentially and fundamentally SOCIAL beings!
With us now being able to vaccinate another 40,000 citizens – starting with the elderly, who’re most at risk after the frontline health workers – we should be heading towards that Holy Grail of “herd immunity” by the end of this year. And that has nothing to do with the happy fact that we’ll be able to herd together to our heart’s content after that!!
But even after that happy state is reached, it’ll take years, if ever, to overcome the damage that’s been done to our collective psyches by this prolonged, enforced isolation and rules – like not being able to take a swig in one fluid motion without having to remove your mask!
…double standards
The Reg 10 nurses’ union want the hospital CEO to be moved for joking that some nurses are with their “sweet man” when they should be at work.
After the scatology by our Honourable MPs, shouldn’t the CEO also have immunity?
