Eyewitness: To choose or not to choose…

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…PNC’s Leader

Your Eyewitness doesn’t know how much of this tension he can take. Will the PNC be choosing its leader this Saturday, or not?! It’s less than three weeks to Christmas, for Chrissake! Don’t these people know that we Guyanese have our eyes firmly stuck on the upcoming festivities?? There’s that regular “seasoning” of the black cake that must be attended to. The setting of the ginger beer…the garlic pork…stringing of the fairy lights…and not to mention worrying where the money gonna come from to pay for all the aforementioned necessities of (Christmas) life!!

Your Eyewitness and the rest of Guyana were PROMISED that the Congress would be over with by this weekend – SPECIFICALLY because of the concerns expressed above. So, it’s not like the PNC brass didn’t know the dilemma they’d be creating if, by today, they don’t announce that there would be no change to the schedule!! But the moment they picked the CHIEF ELECTION OFFICER in the personage of Vincent Alexander to DECIDE as to whether the “logistics” can be in place, he knew that “things na regulah”!! You don’t bring in a big gun (a cannon?) like Vincent unless something big’s going down!!

The first signal that the vaunted “PNC Democracy” – implied by electing, not “selecting”, their leaders – might have some kinks was the (forced) resignation of three members of the Accreditation Committee because they had skin in the game. Distrust had crept into the PNC Garden of Eden!! Now we’re hearing those arrangements to facilitate the virtual voting from all the ten regions because of the COVID RESTRICTIONS mightn’t be in place. But this doesn’t make sense, does it? This is supposed to be a party-in-the-wings to run a country with the oil play of the millennium, and they can’t arrange a virtual event involving a few thousand persons?? No wonder they couldn’t lobby Congress to approve their elections’ rigging!!

No, it can’t be that!! Vincent isn’t needed to clean up an internet communication challenge. More likely than not, the front runners fear that a fix for one or the other of them is in the works, and they need someone of Vincent’s stature to legitimise whatever decision is made going forward. As, for instance, we’ll know by this afternoon whether or not the Congress would be “postponed until the 1st quarter of 2022”.

Your Eyewitness hopes there’s no postponement, and the PNC gets a new Leader this Saturday. Power abhors a vacuum even more than Mother Nature, and it would be a disaster for Guyana if these Facebook warriors have to lead the PNC constituency for three more months!!
These poor souls deserve better!!

…to celebrate Christmas

Now, if there’s one festival that has transcended its moorings, it has to be Christmas. No…your Eyewitness isn’t talking about what goes on in Guyana, where non-Christians will have more “fairy lights” in their yards and trees than the true believers twice-born!! He wants to remind one and all how this Christian celebration all came about. The first clue you have is that fir trees, snow and “ice apples” weren’t around in Bethlehem where Jesus was said to’ve been born!!

The festival was inspired by traditions from the Romans, Celtics, Norse, Druids, and more (all pagan). At the time, all of these different groups shared one big celebration that just happened to fall around Christmas time – the winter solstice. Around 336 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine had converted to Christianity and incorporated the Pagan celebrations as part of Christian observances.
After they conquered the rest of Europe, the custom followed. So, will we see Cumfa and Divali as “Christian Festivals” in the next century?

…to remember Pearl Harbour

Your Eyewitness quotes FDR: “YESTERDAY, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the USA was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
Is the “infamy” still alive?

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