…trashed by Stabber
With some people, the PPP just can’t win…especially when the said people have control of media to challenge the latter while pretending to be speaking “for the people”. Take the Stabber’s editorial from their Sunday edition, “Oneness”. What a snide slash-and-burn they did on President Irfaan Ali’s announcement that he wasn’t just determined to foster a spirit of “oneness” in our society, but he’d already launched the vehicle to execute the task – The “One Guyana Commission” headed by his Prime Minister, Mark Phillips.
After passing through one of the most divisive elections in our history – which ain’t no mean feat, after Burnham’s outrageous electoral heists! – who could question that our country needs to come together? Even the Stabber understood where the President “was coming from” by quoting him: “It is time to set those two impostors (partisan politics and partisan ambition) aside…and to embrace in their place the virtuous cause of patriotic duty.” But no… the Stabber “played stupid” and asserted that all Guyanese are “patriotic in relation to foreign states”. Of course, they are! But how does that contradict the President’s call for us to also exhibit our patriotism towards all our fellow citizens? How can we say we love our country and not love our fellow citizens? Is “our country” just the land? How prosaic!
Incredibly, the Stabber defended “the partisanship” which the President decried! Surely, they can’t be oblivious to the seismic threat to our country’s survival posed by the PNC’s “partisanship” that demanded their supporters believe that their rigging elections was “for the good for the country”!! That they accept Mingo’s concocted figures they insisted matched theirs – but still wouldn’t show their SoPs!! Isn’t this the kind of “partisanship” that caused the invasion of Capitol Hill? Is the Stabber willing to also defend that?
Observing the President’s announcement that the programme “will encompass and respect the diversity from which our “oneness” originates”, the Stabber snarkily sneered: “The least that can be said about this is that it sounds like a contradiction in terms. Diversity in and of itself will not generate ‘oneness’. That kind of ‘unity’ normally presupposes a common foundation for the society and greater homogeneity than is evident here.”
What kind of backward, antediluvian nonsense is this? “Greater homogeneity”? What is this? In what area of life? “Culture” with the return of the British colonial “white masks over black faces” imperative? So we can only have “oneness” when we jettison cultural differences and become like those controlling the Stabber?
Why can’t it be, as the President seems to assume, that it’s only when we’re each proud of our uniqueness, we won’t have to denigrate “the other”?
Gwan da side, Stabber!
…and COVID-19 vaccines
One letter writer advises that our government should “plead” with India for COVID-19 vaccines. He’s convinced the West won’t share theirs. But even though India’s been boasting about its “vaccine diplomacy”: sending its AstraZeneca to its neighbours and countries as far afield as Saudi Arabia and Brazil, Guyana hasn’t been on their radar. What made this even more pointed was that India clearly wasn’t guided by size or wealth of its beneficiaries: even tiny Barbados received 100,000 shots and even tinier Dominica, 70,000! Guyana had to be grateful for the 3000 shots shared by Barbados!
The question, of course, is why has Guyana been ignored? Is it really because they hadn’t “pleaded”? But had Barbados pleaded? Your Eyewitness doesn’t think Mia Mottley is the “pleading kind”! Guyana has had very close diplomatic relations with India even before independence. And this has nothing to do with the People of Indian Origin living here.
Indira Gandhi was closer to Burnham than Jagan! So what gives on the vaccines?
…with cocaine smuggling
Your Eyewitness was a bit taken aback by the headline on the woman nabbed smuggling cocaine in her vagina. Was he being prudish?
But he wondered why the greater quantity ingested wasn’t headlined!
