Your Eyewitness is still waiting to get a report on what went down at the “Stink and Dutty” concert at the National Stadium on the night before Republic Day. But folks appeared to’ve been blindsided by the notion of actually celebrating the birth of our Republic with something that can be described as “stink and dutty”!! But, in all these matters, you gotta look beneath the surface to see what’s really going on. And what your Eyewitness discovered is this “stink and dutty” shebang started back in 2016. That’s when permission was granted by the PNC Government for some private body to introduce “Carnival” into our Jubilee INDEPENDENCE Celebrations. Remember Amna A’s Buju concert tickets??!!
So, what started out as a tragedy – since you just don’t import a cultural event that took over 200 years to evolve – has now become the farce. It’s been brought forward to merge with Mash?? Well!! Now, Mash was always a weak imitation of Carnival, started by those upriver hicks at Mackenzie. And your Eyewitness knows that no matter how the Governments of the day tried to pump some life into it…that was the BEST they could do: have the event BARELY breathe!! But over in Trinidad, like with any organic festival coming out of the bowels of the lower classes, it PULSES with that energy that lies bottled up in the suppression of the masses!!
Not in Guyana!! So how do the organisers sell it? STINK AND DUTTY, that’s how!! Bill it as transgressive as they possibly could – and watch for the always-rebellious youths to come out!! In this case, the youths in Georgetown who wanna feel they’re avant-garde!! Some avant-garde when you’re imitating somebody else’s culture!! With oil now flowing here and Trinidad’s running out, there are a lot of Trinis here nowadays. Your Eyewitness wonders how they can keep from smirking and shaking their heads!!
But even more telling about where the PNC was coming from with their wholesale cogging from the Trinis was one of their spokespersons dubbing the THEME of his supposedly political show as “STINK AND DUTTY”!! He revealed that the name wasn’t just some ironic take on the Trini’s J’Ouvert. Not aware of the historical root of their smearing their bodies with oil and mud etc were the then slaves disguising themselves from the gaze of their masters as they frolicked!! The PNC could only see “stink and dutty”!! It’s truly said that what we see is determined by our lenses!! In this case, “stink and dutty” lenses!!
The PNC’s shill uses stink and dutty words as his schtick. The mind boggles as to what the literalist revellers of the Stink and Dutty concert smeared over their bodies!!
…hair pulling
It was bound to happen sooner or later. The tension’s building in the Opposition camp to such intensity that an explosion’s inevitable. What with them incapable of even appointing an Opposition Leader – they can’t blame the PPP for this, can they?? – their ineptitude is eating away at their innards!! So out spurted the bile when one lesser leader from the APNU “coalition” took a verbal swing at a Trade Union myrmidon of the PNC and its rigging ways!! “Not pulling his weight” was the complaint… “all bluster, and no action!!”
Well, who told him to say that? – never mind it’s true! So, oblivious to the irony he was proving the point on just spewing hot air, the Trade Unionist wrote a hot and sweaty letter to the press, defending his honour. Not pointing to any ACTION he or his out had taken (he couldn’t, since there was none!!) the fella alleged that there were actions the political lightweight party could’ve taken, but didn’t!!
The schoolyard retort: “if I’m a liar, so’re you!!”
…washing out?
Well, the rain’s been coming down more than cats and dogs – pigs and cows?!! – for the last two days.
Is the big guy up there trying to get us to “clean up” our act?? Keep it comin’!!
