…by the military
Your Eyewitness has had over two years to look closely at the military mindset at work when running a State. And, dear reader, let’s not kid ourselves – this has been a military Government from day one. Your Eyewitness had predicted this happenstance since the APNU/AFC campaign unfolded. If it barks like the army, orders like the army and salutes like the army, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude it’s a goddamn army in command!!
So what was different with the GECOM decision from events during the campaign days, when so many top Disciplined Forces brass were on display you had to shade your eyes from being blinded with the reflection from the medalled chests?!!?? From the beginning, Pressie made it clear he was going to pick his own GECOM Chair – come hell or high water.
Does anyone think this trained historian doesn’t know the history of Art 161?? Heck…he could teach some of the lawyers a thing or two about that “compromise” formula which assisted in the ousting of the PNC in 1992. Like Hamilton Green, whom he honoured with the OR in one of his first acts as President, Pressie was and remains an unapologetic, unreconstituted Burnhamite.
He was one of those Burnhamites whom Hoyte banished and peripheralised when he decided to chart a new course for Guyana post-1985.
Of Burnham’s two ideologues in charge of indoctrinating the two key institutions, McDavid was with the Public Service, and Granger was with the Disciplined Forces. McDavid was banished to Russia, and Granger was made his military advisor. Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer! Hoyte didn’t even solicit Granger’s opinion on the weather!!
Granger, like Green, never accepted Hoyte’s acceptance of the 1992 elections results. If he’d been in charge of the army, he would’ve never deployed troops to save the day when Green attacked GECOM as the votes were coming in and the PNC was shown as losing. Strike one against Joe Singh!!
Like Burnham, Pressie will never allow technicalities like voting to remove the PNC. His military training impels him to accept “collateral” damage for the cause. Problem is: as a military leader, he insists it’s his sole prerogative to define “the cause”. Like Burnham, he sees the PPP as “evil incarnate” and beyond redemption. They must be prevented from returning to office by any means necessary.
Pressie has Burnham’s perspective on constitutions: they really don’t matter, and are essentially a sop to placate those who believe in such “Nancy stories” like “democracy”. As Burnham told his 1979 Congress: “You can’t just read on the lines, comrades: it’s more important to read between the lines!!”
… and irreversible
As an indicator of the contempt Pressie has for the PPP, you only have to look at how he toyed with them in accepting list after list when he never intended to pick anyone from those lists. In fact, anyone who accepted being on the PPP list was given the kiss of death – even if Pressie hadn’t already picked his GECOM head.
But the way he actually made the cut was just rubbing salt into the wound. Patterson confirmed he was never consulted about being the GECOM Chair until a few hours before Jagdeo was summoned to State House on Diwali night. He just got a call from Pressie, and then and there he said, “Yes sir!!” For all your Eyewitness knows, he might’ve been lighting his diyas, yet he didn’t even miss a beat!!
“A few hours ago …I was never approached prior to tonight,” he said, and explained that Granger called him, made the offer, and he accepted!
Signed, sealed and delivered!
…CCJ test
The PPP’s taken Pressie’s unilateral move to the CCJ. But they’ll get a clue as to how the CCJ’s wind is blowing with the case the spit press insists in dubbing “third term”.
Somebody’s getting more than Christmas this December!!
