Valentine’s Day is usually commemorated because of some far-fetched associations with medieval “courtly love” –- which is quite a stretch since St Valentine was killed sometime back in the 3rd century!! He’s also the saint of epileptics so maybe his connection with courtly love is the “swooning” at a time when epilepsy hadn’t been properly diagnosed?! Anyhow, Valentine’s Day has become associated in modern times with some more unsavoury events.
Take Chicago of 1929, when Janet Jagan née Rosenberg was an elementary school student: it was a tough city even back then. At that time, the inner city Irish and Italian gangs (under Al Capone) were battling it out for turf. There was the St Valentine’s Day massacre when seven mobsters were lined up against a wall and executed. Maybe because both the Irish and Italians were Catholic, they knew St Valentine was also associated with executions of early Christians by the Roman Emperor?
But we in Guyana also have reason to remember Valentine’s Day for weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth rather than swooning love. After all, wasn’t it on Valentine’s Day 2015 that coalition politics – which a lot of Guyanese felt could’ve resolved Guyana’s political wars – was destroyed forever?? That’s right! It’s on that day Granger’s PNC signed the Cummingsburg Accord with the AFC – only to promptly betray every single commitment to the principles of coalitions!! And making every fair-minded person who’d voted then for them swear off coalitions for life!!
How are we – or more importantly Norton – gonna ever get folks to trust the PNC again?? AFC’s Ramjattan had smelt a rat when he said his party was gonna be “Dead Meat” if he consummated the marriage! Boy was he ever right!! Right now, they’ve become not just “Dead Meat” but – to use the words of one of his henchmen – “stink and dutty Dead Meat”!! Ramjattan and Nagamootoo had made Granger promise there’d be no closing of the sugar industry; Nagamootoo would be given a Prime Ministership on steroids; there would be power sharing with the PPP, etc, etc!!
On the campaign trail, Granger and Nagamootoo – poor, deluded fool! – played up the Valentine’s Day theme, with the two of them holding hands and simpering at each other on the stage!! But we all know – as ex-President Ramotar had predicted in rather elegant language – he got “Larwah”!! What turned off idealists, who’d chosen “coalition politics”, was that the AFC leaders had known of the PNC coalition history with the UF – and its tragic and cynical denouement.
The PNC hadn’t only vowed, but had signed along the dotted line, to keep their word. What can they possibly do differently going forward?
PNC martyred coalition politics! RIP!
…commercialised love
Now you don’t have to be a Marxist to appreciate how capitalism has commercialised everything – including social relations of the most intimate nature such as “romantic love”. But then again hadn’t the same ideal of “romantic love” been invented – yes, invented! – during the feudal period of knights going off to battle dragons and (same difference!) Muslims in their “Holy Land”??
Don’t forget that along with the romance of scented handkerchiefs and poetry, the chivalrous knights invented the “Chastity Belt” – when the men literally held the key!! Your Eyewitness knows that notions of hygiene were always looser among the English, but didn’t the women itch like hell? From that time into the present, women were still men’s property, but they (the women) were convinced it was cute!! So today, fellas who’d neglected their women, or worse yet, even physically, verbally (dildo anyone?) or otherwise psychologically, will redeem themselves by bringing home some flowers and chocolate!!
If it were up to your Eyewitness, he would’ve just said, “Gwan da side!!”
…making up?
Maybe this Valentine’s Day 2022, the PNC self-selected “Elders” — the PNC don’t do “elected”! – will broker an Accord between Norton and Granger on the LoO?
OK…we know Aubrey transgressed when he went and got ELECTED. But still!!
