After throwing all the blame on the PPP for not following up on THEIR promise to “have dialogue”, the PNC-led APNU/AFC coalition Government have had their bluff called– by the international community to whom they complained.
Time longer than twine!! They didn’t count on Jimmy Carter being conscientious enough to call Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo. They figured that with Trump dismissing us as a “shithole country”, we just didn’t matter. And they could “do wha’ deh want wid we”!!
Well, we may be a shithole country, but we’re now a shithole country WITH OIL!! And that makes a world of difference. Mainly that while the big ones are pumping out all that oil from under the sea – by injecting back all our gas – they don’t want folks getting restless here. See what could happen when folks are rioting in the streets for bread?? The LARGEST reserves of oil in the world go begging – in Venezuela!
No siree Bob!! They don’t want that here. It’s not the rioting per se. The oil, after all, will NEVER touch our soil; but it’s the bad press it’ll give the petroleum industry, which isn’t exactly the poster boy for benevolence!! So we’re going to have “talks” – headed by Granger and Jagdeo — and the question arises as to what they’ll “talk” about. Now that’s not a problem, is it? After all, as your Eyewitness mentioned before, as soon as he was catapulted into the presidency (after PNC riots made President Janet Jagan sick) Jagdeo was forced to dialogue with Hoyte!
What was their agenda? Well, like the warlord he was — who’d forced the PPP to truncate their term of office by two years – Hoyte, in 2002, demanded that villages in his constituency, which he dubbed “marginalised”, be “rehabilitated. Never mind that the recent Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) had shown that ALL rural communities were similarly economically challenged – and that Amerindian hinterland communities were worse off. And you wonder why Amerindians want their own party?
Anyhow, President Jagdeo’s PPP government doled out the money to fix Hoyte’s villages, but then the latter passed on to the “land of the ancestors”, as they say in Wakanda. Corbin seized leadership of the PNC, and to flex his muscles to show challengers like Vincent Alexander he was “man”, in 2003 he demanded new “talks” with Jagdeo. And demanded new spending!
So the first thing Jagdeo can do is to identify “depressed villages” in his constituency, and demand the PNC government get them fixed, or else!! This shouldn’t be a problem, since Granger has fired 5700 sugar workers…and 2600 Amerindians.
All the fancy talk about “governance” and “debt” and such like can wait. The first oil money should make “depressed” sugar and interior villages whole.
Drill baby, drill!!
… about a Ministry of Labour?
Granger promised to continue the “legacy” of his socialist Founder-Leader Burnham, yet he has stubbornly refused to reinstate the “Ministry of Labour” — which he not only miniaturised into a department, but placed at its head Keith Scott, about whom, after three years, folks are still asking “Keith who??” Well, he’s one of the “one-man” parties in APNU. And if the AFC, much less WPA, can’t get a minute of Granger’s time, imagine Scott’s “influence”!!
So much for “making the small man into the real man” in this iteration of PNC rule!! And imagine, we have the largest Cabinet in the HISTORY of Guyana – with a Ministry of Business!! So, if Business deserves a Ministry – not that Gaskin’s done anything, but that’s neither here nor there! – why doesn’t Labour? Does your Eyewitness have to remind Granger that the neo-liberal dogma his Government follows has left workers screwed across the world?
Where even the middle class are demanding Labour protection for the inequalities generated! …is a “Compromat”
The Trump-Putin tango has generated another Russian meme- “compromat” – in the English-speaking world, now that “glasnost” is passé.
It means, “a compromising situation”…and isn’t confined to using the services of porn stars!!
