…speak only good
Back in the day, when a classical education was de rigeur, the Latin phrase “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum” was quite popular. It means, “Of the dead, speak nothing but good”. It represents the age of civility, in which your Eyewitness was raised by grandparents who went back to the Edwardian era. He tells you, dear reader, all of this to explain his uneasiness in discussing what purports to be the “AFC” – which has certainly become the “DEAD meat” prophesied by its leader Ramjattan.
But how can you be sympathetic to that lot of vipers, who (therefore) knew exactly what they were getting into when they hitched up with the PNC? It meant they allowed raw ambition, greed and avarice to overtake their faculties, and they’ve now paid the price. As old people would say: they made their bed, and they must now lie down in it. Supine and comatose!
What got your Eyewitness on this examination of the mortuary aphorism above as it relates to the AFC is the news that Raphael Trotman (of “Nassau” and “2%” fame) who was once “Minister of Natural Resources”, hasn’t even been appointed to the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources!! Oh, how low have the mighty fallen!! But then, the fall isn’t that extreme, is it? Even while the PNC was in Government, his benefactor from Nassau, David Granger, had stripped him of the Oil and Gas sector in his portfolio – which is where all the action in Natural Resources was gonna be!! He was replaced by a neophyte – with a degree in Environmental Science to boot!!
But back to the matter at hand – the Sectoral Committee. Four of these were established back in 2001 as part of the “inclusive governance” demanded by the PNC after they violently protested in the streets of Georgetown and meted out some condign beatings on anyone they adjudged to be “PPP supporters”. Yeah…the PNC Berbice beatings echoed those of 1998. Anyhow, the Sectoral Committees were supposed to examine the full gamut of Government’s operations in real time, as opposed to the after-the-fact auditing function of the PAC.
They can summon any Government official to be questioned on any ongoing policy or project – for instance, on the recent firings they claim are “racial”. There’s nothing to stop them from doing this, and in this way force the Government to avoid going in non-kosher directions!
So, when Trotman says he stepped aside to let the wet-behind-the-ears MPs hand-selected by Granger “get experience”, and he’ll be there in the background to help, you know he’s full of something!!
The PNC would rather cut their nose to have Trotman become relevant!!
…expose sleepers
When the PNC reneged on their promise to appoint the vice chairman in the RDCs they controlled – like Region 4 – from AFC members, David Patterson, the AFC General Secretary, resigned in a fit of righteous indignation. After all the humiliations the PNC had inflicted on the AFC during the five years they were yoked in (unholy) matrimony, this fella still thought there was honour among thieves? What a chump.
Or maybe not. After all, during the said five years, most of the PNC’s degradations were aimed at Ramjattan and Nagamootoo. Especially the former! Patterson, Trotman and Hughes were treated as if they were “born PNC”! So, your Eyewitness wasn’t in the least bit surprised when Patterson suddenly backflipped and announced that he’d “un-resigned”!! He never explained how exactly his resignation from the AFC was going to pressure the PNC.
But all of this is just gamesmanship. The only use the PNC have for the AFC is to occupy space on the Opposition benches.
To keep out Volda’s partisans!
…denounce leader’s sycophancy
The AFC’s claim to fame to the PNC is bringing in Indian Guyanese votes from Berbice. Yet Ramjattan remained mute when 7000 sugar workers were fired.
But is now livid over PPP’s “racial” firings in the Public Sector!!
