…but not from the axe! The PNC still insists on playing ducks and drakes with the law of our land – this time, in the matter of GECOM acting on a motion to dismiss the three Horsemen of the (Rigging) Apocalypse – Lowenfield, Myers and Mingo (Sounds like one of those ambulance-chasing, bottom feeding law firms, no?) Imagine where Guyana would be if the international committee didn’t stand by the principled Guyanese who defended democracy?? Another quarter-century of illegal PNC rule, that’s what!! The internal logic of an illegal regime is that, like in 1964-1992, the jackboots of the PNC would’ve once again been on the necks of the Guyanese people. Once you’ve decided you don’t need the people’s approval, what are you but cannon fodder for the rulers’ aggrandizement? And even those who now support them would’ve again ended up with “white mouth” when everything – including the law – crashed down on us. Somehow, your Eyewitness can’t wrap his mind around the insistence of the PNC and their myrmidons that they were really “rigging for our own good”!! That’s just what the slave owners said to the poor folks they dragged across the Atlantic Ocean to work as slaves – it was for their own good!! They were savages, and heck, they’d just have to put up with what it took to “civilise” them. It was for their own good!! So what if, like during the Burnham days, we ended up hungry, homeless and naked? Well, all those who think we bit the bullet on that attempt at imposing another dictatorship shouldn’t rest on their laurels just yet. What we’re seeing with the moves at GECOM is simply one of a number of action prongs through which the PNC’s still trying to seize power. At GECOM, the laws of the land that govern our democratic institutions are being twisted to throw a monkey wrench into the workings of the system. Some other prongs, of course, are the provocations to street protests with their inevitable segueing into violence and mayhem in Georgetown. Here it is, a motion was moved to terminate the services (!!?!) of the Dyspeptic Trio, but it has been held up by all sorts of frivolous objections of the PNC Commissioners. This time they don’t want the cause for the dismissals to be stated!! Obviously, if they got their way, they’d proceed to the courts on the grounds of dismissal without cause!! How dumb do they think the Guyanese people are? They didn’t fool the PPP Commissioners! But their walk-out just delays the trio’s Day of Judgement. For the same law says that the Commission can meet 48 hours later (TODAY!) and vote with a new quorum of 4. The Chair and the 3 PPP Commissioners! Bye, bye riggers!! …but into the fire? Far be it for your Eyewitness to get in the middle of a spat between two boys from the hood, but the claim that “GAWU was granted recognition under Burnham’s regime” deserves deconstruction!! Granted?? Well, technically that’s so, because “recognition” of unions was one of the powers Burnham guarded jealously! When he couldn’t do so directly, he created a welter of paper unions, and “recognised” these rather that the ones with real workers! Remember the “Association of Masters and Mistresses,” to undercut the GTU? As for GAWU’s recognition, hadn’t they demand this after Burnham was given office in 1964 – as they’d done since 1948 as GIWU? And didn’t the Sugar Producers Association finally concede in 1976, after massive strikes in 1974 and 1975. The Dec 31 poll wherein GAWU got 21,487 votes versus the MPCA’s 376 was the coup de grace. Burnham needed PPP support to nationalise sugar!! …but you’d be dangled! In 1979, at the PNC’s Biennial Congress, Burnham joked about having Gordon Todd, head of the CCWU, dangled over the ocean from a helicopter, after he stood up for his workers against the Govt! Was funny to the man Rodney dubbed “King Kong”!
