…on Moïse’s assassination
The big, unanswered question on Haiti’s President Moïse’s assassination remains as to who are the “intellectual authors”. As yesterday’s editorial in this newspaper elaborated, this was no two-bit operation, but well planned and executed. Your Eyewitness is a tad surprised…since in jurisdictions like Haiti – where the Police aren’t exactly known for their human rights observances – the expected confessions would’ve been long beaten out of the captured assassins! Something isn’t kosher here.
But in the meantime, your Eyewitness was touched by the reflections on the grisly murder by one of the Caribbean’s more activist-oriented academics, Sir Dr Hilary Beckles, VC of UWI, historian of slavery and Head of the Caribbean Reparations Committee. His words are so profound that they’ll be reproduced verbatim: “The assassination of President Moïse of Haiti is the latest dramatic reflection of the culture of murderous political violence that has typified the colonisation of the Caribbean, and whose legacy continues to speak to the devalued worth of black life especially in our hemisphere.
“For the people of Haiti and the wider Caribbean region who have politically united for mutual survival with dignity under the banner of CARICOM, this blunt and brutal execution of the democratically-elected Head of State foregrounds the historic savagery long fought against in our region’s struggle to forge a humane and sophisticated post-colonial Caribbean civilisation.
“Political murder and social mayhem have long been the management tools used to maintain the misery and marginalisation of the Caribbean as it marches inexorably to the rendezvous of democracy as a freedom victory.
“No country in the modern world has paid as great a human and material price as Haiti in seeking to convert its rubble of bloody imperial domination into a viable democratic nation state. In this regard, the murder of Moïse is the latest in a legacy that includes political leaders such as Walter Rodney and Maurice Bishop. His political execution reflects but an element in the internal political gridlock many Caribbean societies face in their effort to detach from the colonial scaffold with its endemic thirst for violence, and advance to a peaceful domestic democratic idealism.”
Bluntly, what Prof Beckles is reminding those “woke” nihilists in Guyana who’ve been celebrating the assassination – revealing their own goals in Guyana – is that they’ve morphed into “the historic savagery” of those who violated us in slavery and indentureship. We hear about abused children becoming abusive parents – but this savage impulse to violently murder “the other” with whom we disagree tells us we’ve seen the enemy – and it is us!
As Rodney ruefully warned us just before he was assassinated – the intellectual author being Burnham and the PNC – we came out of slavery better than this.
…on AFC’s inanities
There is the old saw – “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt” – that Khemraj Ramjattan would’ve been well advised to observe. But then discretion was never the strong suit of this fella who predicting that if the AFC hitched up with the PNC, it’d become “Dead Meat”, blithely did just that!! Talk about a “self-fulfilling prophecy”!!
Anyhow, Ramjattan just revealed that the scheduled AFC biennial National Conference for this month is off. Why? Well duh!! COVID-19, of course!! Didn’t you hear Aunty Amna explaining the similarly (coincidental!) delay of the PNC’s Biennial Congress? But can’t arrangements be made – -as for instance meetings of the National Assembly have been and in which Ramjattan participates? “Well, yes,” conceded Ramjattan, “and a committee is working on that.”
Asked as to who’re in the Committee, Ramjattan expressed great indignation: “AFC’s membership and parameters of operation are not public information!”
Sorta like the Russian spies who’ve never been identified!
…on desperation
Lowenfield’s seeking to prevent PPP GECOM Commissioners Gunraj and Shadick from participating in GECOM’s deliberations and decision on his fate. He obviously never read Art 161, which details the Commission’s powers including “the power to remove…such staff.”
