There are all sorts of initiatives being floated to “fix” our longsuffering country. There’s a “new Civil Society” group formed to “foster discussions on constitutional reform”; trouble is, it’s comprised of the same recycled faces that pop up year after year to be funded by some external entity to push the latest solution de jour of their donors. How many groups haven’t we seen pop up like Jumbie Umbrellas over the years? GUARD? Social Partners? Red Caps? Blue Caps? RISE?
Then there’s a “National Conversation” over Zoom scheduled for next week; it is sponsored by the ERC and UG, and is funded by the UN. Your Eyewitness will bet dollars to donuts that most of the speakers will be the same whiners who seem to have nothing else to do than scribble off missives to the dailies on every topic under the sun and sundry other celestial bodies! They’ll be joined by the abovementioned self-appointed oracles just to ensure they keep up their profiles in order to keep their foreign funding flowing.
Now, the problem your Eyewitness has with these “problem pimps” is they keep on recycling the same old proposals, with only the presenters changing from one generation to the next. But they just don’t introspect why they haven’t gotten any success over the last fifty years. THEIR problem is they’re oblivious to the fact that all they can do is make PROPOSALS, and it’s the two political behemoths to decide whether they’ll implement them.
Take the panacea in the area of “constitutional reform” that’s been floated ever since Burnham departed Castellani House for Seven Ponds. The “Power Sharing” spiel has also been a constant suggestion as the silver bullet to our troubles, but its pushers studiously ignore that the idea has never worked unless there’s some power – external or internal – to force the parties to sign up; and when that power is removed, POP goes the weasel! Just check N. Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement right now in the wake of England’s Brexit, or Bosnia and all the detritus from the former Yugoslavia. Even if power sharing were needed, who’s gonna force the parties to go along?
But, as your Eyewitness has been insisting ever since he came on the scene, why fix something if it ain’t broken?? Power sharing rejects the norm of majoritarian politics because it claims that there can be a “tyranny of the majority” over minorities. But what if the country’s A NATION OF MINORITIES – as the Guyanese census has shown we are?
Doesn’t every minority get an equal crack at forming the government by attracting others?
But this will never be accepted by the chatterati, ‘cause, as “problem pimps”, they wouldn’t get to shake the foreign money tree!
…on PNC recalcitrance
There’s a pithy Yankee saying, used when folks have to make decisions faced with options, as between the Devil and the deep blue sea: “You can’t get there from here”. This, unfortunately, is the situation in which the followers of the PNC find themselves. They know they’re in deep doo-doo politically; they know they want to get out of it, cause it’s almost up to their noses; but how do they “get there from here”, when their leadership choice boils down to Granger and his mentee Harmon?
Well, some might say there’s Volda Lawrence with her titles – Chairman of the PNC, head of the most powerful branch of the party in Georgetown, and so on. The problem, however, is because of the nature of PNC leadership, as constructed and bequeathed by Fat Boy Forbes, all those titles aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit (as Burnham’s old riding partner Lyndon Johnson would say)!
And imagine Granger was rigged into that position by Volda and company.
Poetic justice!
…on Venezuelan bellicosity
Since 1962, when Venezuela suddenly raised their controversy over our borders – settled since 1899 – it’s been their Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. That’ll soon be over
On Dec 18, the World Court will assume jurisdiction – and then affirm the old Arbitral Award!
---
