Wild West…
May 17, 2013 By
…vigilantism
The murders of two men – one in Sophia and the other in Berbice – have forced the nation to grapple with this latest descent into barbarity. Now while there’s been a great deal of ink spilled over the depravity of those who inflicted the fatal beatings – we’d like to make a wider connection.
You see, these kinds of societal breakdowns and the incidents – wide apart as they were geographically and ethnically – are society-wide and are never happenstance. Invariably, they’re connected with broader movements that create a mindset in which the illegal behaviour is justified.
It all has to do with how we are socialised to look at the law and the organs of the state to deal with the inevitable disputes in every society – excepting possibly heaven. And even there, we heard of a fellow, high up the hierarchy, who disagreed with how things were going and had to be expelled. In these matters, the fish, as they say, starts to stink at the top.
Now look at what’s been going on in Guyana for over a year. There’s an election. The opposition can’t wait for the count to be done properly. They march up and down the streets of Georgetown, threatening Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) officials. The police have to use condign force to keep the peace. The police get blamed – by opposition leaders, one of whom actually was a former commissioner and another, head of the army. The authority of the forces of law and order is diminished in the eyes of the populace.
A while later, the Alliance for Change (AFC) disagrees with the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) and A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) about gradually equalising the electricity tariffs for Linden. The PPP/C and APNU worked with the system – the PPP/C wanted equalisation, APNU only agreed after it forced the PPP/C to raise pensions. AFC then breaks the rules of the (political) game, runs down to Linden, screams they were betrayed by the PPP/C (“racist”) and APNU (“sell-out”) and all hell breaks loose as APNU backtracks trying to protect its turf.
The police are called in to keep the peace, the law is broken and flouted, shots are fired, three demonstrators die, and…the police are blamed. Their authority is diminished once again. Protests now pop up every time there’s a disagreement. No one wants to use the legal system. Why are we now surprised when ordinary people take vigilante justice when they “catch a thief”?
The opposition leaders must start leading by example when it comes to using the law to settle disputes.
…City Hall
The long-running soap-opera “As the World Turns” had evidently been replaced by a local production called “As City Hall Turns”. Every day there’s a new twist but the theme’s always the same: the avaricious mayor Hamilton Green and his band of renegades holding the citizens of our (once fair) city to ransom.
In the recent episodes, the mayor was upstaged by a steely-eyed gunslinger, brought in from the outside by the Local Government Ministry. And to add drama to the storyline – the gunslinger’s a woman. While the mayor was able to outdraw all the other hired-guns brought in to clean up the mess in the corrupt city, it looked like he met his match this time.
Untouched by the dirt that evidently accretes on everyone who’s come through the City Hall swamp, the Town Clerk Carol Sooba had some old-fashioned ideas. Like a person must work for what they get paid. A real revolutionary, if you know City Hall.
In the latest episode, the mayor wants to fire the town clerk for “insubordination”. Previously, it was for being unqualified. Now, after interviewing eight candidates, they can’t get anyone qualified. Poor mayor. Stay tuned.
…Mother’s Day
Lest it be thought your faithful Eyewitness is heartless, let me assure everyone that every Mothers’ Day the Eyewitness sings Mighty Sparrow’s “Mothers Love” to his dear old Mom, who’s still around to pull him up!
The day after…
May 10, 2013 By
…Indian arrival
So the songs have been sung, the speeches have been made, and the dances have been performed. What now? Well, at least, we can look back about what went down this last “Indian Arrival Day”. For one, non-Indian politicians were quite conspicuous by their absence from the various celebrations held all over the place.
What’s going on? Politicians don’t care what a crowd might be celebrating…it could be a public hanging for all they care. Once there’s a crowd, they’ll be there, pressing the flesh and hoping for recognition…if not a vote. Could it be they weren’t invited? Naaahhh! Couldn’t be. We saw a pic of Moses Nagamootoo and Khemraj Ramjattan at an event in Berbice. They were in the second row, behind the Regional Chairman David Armogan.
Who was the protocol officer? A regional chairman outranks a presidential candidate, a leader of a party, and a member of parliament, all rolled into one? A man who believes he controls the balance of power in Guyana? What the heck? You could tell from his eyes that Ramjattan was quite agitated. But later for that.
The point we want to make is that if the Alliance For Change (AFC) was invited, how come Nigel Hughes and other non-Indians didn’t show up? If you listen to these fellas, they’re the only authentic “multi-racial” party in Guyana. So they’re only “multi-racial” when they hop onto a political stage? No, that’s not quite what goes on. We’ve seen the Indian “brothers” at the Emancipation bash and elsewhere with the “one love” message. Looks like the love only flows in one direction.
But we heard that things were somewhat different over at a Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) bash over by the convention centre. While there were only the Indian politicians – Ramjattan and Dr Frank Anthony – the African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA) was evidently not only invited but actually spoke. Well, one of their reps spoke…Eric Philips …and we’re assuming he was vetted. Looks like Dr Anthony is determined to push the idea that – all groups are covered under the “Arrival umbrella”. He may have some problems with ex-Chief Magistrate Juliet Holder-Allen. She’s said in no uncertain terms – “Not me!!!!”
There was some criticism of the Dharmic Sabha’s Bollywood-style singing bash over at the stadium on Arrival Day. One fella from Berbice who has a thing against Rubenesque women complained it was “fund-raising”. What’s wrong about that if the funds would be helping the descendants of those who “arrived”? Home for abused children.
Rum till ah die
But that’s more than can be said for what one other prominent Indian is doing in these arrival events. When Indians were brought to Guyana, alcohol wasn’t big in their villages. The habit was foisted on them over here. It wasn’t quite by accident that the manager of the sugar estates allowed Portuguese and Chinese rum shops opposite the pay offices.
So, today alcoholism is the most dreaded problem in Indian communities. Name the social problem and you’ll find a nexus with alcohol. And guess who’s one of the biggest suppliers of rum in Guyana? You hit the jackpot.
But the irony takes a cruel turn when you discover that such rum companies sponsor a host of the chutney shows where the golden brew flows like the Essequibo River.
These people celebrating Arrival Day should spend as much time looking to the future as they do to the past. There’ll be no future if alcohol abuse isn’t curbed.
How sweet it is!
May 10, 2013 By
Life in Guyana
Back in the (colonial) day, when you wanted to say someone had it real good, you’d say, “You got life in London!” Well, according to the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), people might now be saying, “You got life in Guyana!”
A researcher from the University of Connecticut conducted research in 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean involving 38,631 persons as to how they felt about their lives. Happy or unhappy? Turns out that 70.7 per cent of Guyanese are happy with their lives as it is right now – compared with only 68.2 per cent Trinis, 63.4 per cent Jamaicans, and 63.2 per cent Surinamese who would say the same thing. Not surprisingly, Haiti came in way down at the bottom of the heap at 54.8 per cent. And this is what we’ve been saying all the time. If you listen to papers like the Muckraker and the rest of the opposition, you’d think that Guyanese just hate their lives.
With all the problems the Muckraker takes great pleasure to trumpet, if not concoct, you’d think we’d be below even Haiti.
But when you get to the Guyanese people themselves – they are happy. And why not? Hey… sure there’re problems and challenges. But where is there a world without that reality? We’re not in heaven yet, are we? The question is that, when considered in the grand scheme of things, can we say that life is on the whole good or bad and that we are happy or unhappy? And this is the honest answer of over 70 per cent of Guyanese – we’re happy! This news will make the Muckraker and the opposition unhappy, for sure. Look how much time and effort they’ve spent trying to convince Guyanese that things are so bad, we must be miserable. Well, we might not have the per capita income of Trinidad and Tobago and the other countries mentioned, but the results of the survey show that it’s not only money that delivers happiness. If this was so, the U. S. wouldn’t be using the most medicine in the world to fight depression.
Happiness comes to a person who looks around and sees that things are getting better. And this is what is happening in Guyana. Everywhere you look around, you can see progress.
Things are on the up and up… and this is how we have to keep it. It’s just that the Muckraker and the opposition want to convince people that white is black and red is yellow, or something. Throw them in the dustbin.
Life in City Hall
For almost 20 years, City Hall has become a veritable heaven for those around the mayor-for-life Hamilton Green – meaning most of the City Council and its officers. And why not? No one has a job description… basically it’s “do what you want”. Which is translated into “don’t do anything that has to do with your job”. Excepting, of course, it means filling your own pockets, as several officers showed recently.
So you’d expect us to snort a bit in disbelief, if not disgust, when we heard City Hall was going to collaborate with the folks from Parliament to “restore the city”. After all… look how well they’ve begun. They’ve already formed four committees!!!!!
“The four committees set are the Technical Committee, the Mobilisation Committee, Public Awareness Committee, and the Solid Waste Management Committee,” said the deputy mayor, Patricia Chase-Green. (The dyspeptic duo is like a law firm – Green and Green.) That’s progress, isn’t it? Any day now, we’ll hear about the sub-committees to service those committees. The sub-committee on refreshments; sub-committee on transportation around the city; sub-committee on liaisoning…..
To lie…
Stabber News claims that in Jan 2010, “the government and the National Frequency Management Unit signalled out of the blue they would be reviewing radio licence applications”. “Out of the blue”? What about the Appellate Court’s decision in September 2009 ordering Television Guyana to have a radio licence?
Whistling
April 19, 2013 By
…blowing
Ramjattan told his pals over at the Muckraker that a “whistle-blower” gave him some “hot information”. Our minds immediately cast back to the pope’s butler who spilled the beans of what had been going on behind the walls of the Vatican. Secret meetings, code names, ‘drops’, like we heard about in spy movies, all rose to the fore. Those revelations led to the resignation of the pope and we still haven’t heard the last of the effects of that ‘whistle-blower’.
Then, of course, there’s the most famous ‘whistle-blower’ of all times – Deep Throat. Rather fortuitously, he chose a moniker no one of his time could forget – the name of the most famous porno movie of all time, which described, to a ‘T’, the unique talent of its star. Deep Throat, of course, brought on the resignation of Richard Nixon, president of the USA.
So we read with bated breath the ‘revelation’ of Ramjattan’s ‘whistle-blower’ – who we dubbed ‘Dry Throat’, knowing of the AFC’s head honcho’s fondness for ‘wetting his whistle’. We could see him and Dry Throat knocking down a large at the corner rum shop as the latter spilled his guts. Ramjattan’s said his informer told him that Brassington, his bête noir from NICIL, and Burrowes, a bureaucrat, had an account over at GBTI with Gy $4.9 billion (you read that right….billions!) with themselves as signatories.
Now when we heard this our eyes bulged a bit, we must confess. Even with our depreciated dollar, we’re talking real money here. We could see that some heads would be rolling, if the info were true. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Was the info true? The very next day, the answer came: it was all a lie…a fabrication…a tale. The Muckraker threw Ramjattan to the dogs and accused him, via the bank, of not checking the story his ‘whistle-blower’ fed him.
But we know that that’s pure horse sh*t, don’t we? It’s the duty of the newspaper to investigate allegations of this type before printing them. The Muckraker never even called the bank. What we think Brassington and Burrowes ought to do is to sue the pants off the Muckraker and Ramjattan for libel. There’s no question that their reputations were damaged by a patent untruth that was published.
But the real question is: was there ever a whistle-blower? Or did the Muckraker and Ramjattan concoct the whole tissue of lies over a large? Or did Ramjattan imagine the whole thing after imbibing a large?
…in the dark
We must confess we’re getting royally tired over this interminable debate over the budget…or more specifically whether the opposition can make cuts. This newspaper reported that the question is ‘to cut or not to cut’ and that the Speaker would have answered it yesterday (Tuesday). Possibly, even as we’re writing this.
But while we might have posed the question correctly, in an echo of the Prince of Denmark, the crux of the matter is that it is not for the Speaker to give the answer. The answer has already been given by the courts in the eminent person of the chief justice. And the answer is a resounding NO!!! Can’t get any clearer than that, can we? It appears that because the Speaker is behind a big desk and speaks from a fancy chair, he believes he’s been elevated to the bar.
He must disabuse himself of this notion immediately, or he’ll be embarrassed soon. His misapprehension of his job title was manifest on Monday when he condescendingly told the three (lawyer) MPs they were deserving of “silk”!
Passages
April 12, 2013 By
A PPP stalwart
A “stalwart”, my dictionary declares, is “a loyal, reliable, hardworking supporter or participant in an organisation”. The PPP has made the term quite familiar in Guyana – it’s an organisation that prizes ‘stalwarts’. Reepu Daman Persaud, who just ‘left his earthly body’, was unquestionably one of the staunchest stalwarts in the history of the PPP.
Persaud, of course, wore several hats in the party – none more important than being head of the Hindu Dharmic Sabha, always described nowadays as ‘the largest Hindu organisation’ in Guyana. But it’s easy to forget (or for the young’uns, to know) that it wasn’t always so. In fact, Persaud had to build that organisation from ‘scratch’ after the older organisation – the Maha Sabha – was hijacked by the PNC.
This was started in 1974, when the Burnhamite dictatorship was entrenching itself, and Persaud’s mobilisation would have been designated as ‘enemy action’. Persaud, of course, was an integral member of the PPP’s inner circle since the late 1950s and a PPP MP since 1964. He would’ve been only 28 then. So even though the Maha Sabha received lavish support from the PNC (at one time its executives were paid from Congress Place), it soon became a shell in the face of the rampant Dharmic Sabha.
Persaud, while always a PPP stalwart, never interpreted his role as an ‘enemy’ of the PNC and always maintained cordial relations with the hierarchy of that organisation. Today, there is trenchant criticism of Lincoln Lewis for engaging the government. Persaud, like his mentor Jagan, always believed in maintaining contact with the PNC.
History has vindicated both of them.
We understand that his religion might have taught him that no one or no group is completely evil – or completely virtuous. He acted then, with a pragmatism that served his party well, both inside and outside of Parliament. He was a bridge builder. This is a role that hasn’t been sufficiently recognised or appreciated. We hope his comrades will expand this theme in the coming days.
It’s been said that he always wanted to be a lawyer – something that one of his daughters achieved. But while he never reached that goal – probably because of his circumstance, he more than made up for it with his knowledge of Parliamentary procedures. This is a talent that parliamentarians of the present generation might emulate to their (and the country’s) benefit.
May he achieve peace in whatever way his religion defines the final resting place of those who have done their duty to God, the people, and their country.
Postponed passage?
The president recently revealed that the opposition wants to be given some additional time before they vote on the budget. Now this is a switch – after all the huffing and puffing about making more chops bigger than the ones they inflicted last year. After the finance minister introduced the budget two Mondays ago, as has been the custom forever, the opposition got a whole week to study the budget. They then got another week, which ended Monday (April 8), to make general comments.
Starting Tuesday, they were supposed to transform themselves into a “Committee of Supply” and go through the budget item by item, line by line. So why the pleading for a delay?
They gave themselves away during their speeches last week. They basically couldn’t find anything wrong with the budget! What are they going to chop? The increased Old Age Pension? So after all the ‘fat talk’ to their supporters over the past year, they’re in a real bind. How’re they going to wean away voters if they admit the government’s doing everything right?
Those that have nothing to say should remain silent, lest they reveal their prejudices!
Passage into amnesia
Nagamootoo criticised the Gy$1 billion budgetary support for GuySuCo as a “bailout”. After his passage from the PPP, he’s forgotten the countless billions the sugar levy gave to the country?
GECOM’s sacrificial victim
April 5, 2013 By
Propitiations?
The long knives are out for Gocool Boodhoo in GECOM. Long seen as a man who didn’t cower before the hotbed of opposition connivance and partisanship in the Secretariat, the opposition have made it bold to declare they’re not backing him for the renewal of his contract which is due.
The opposition have long made known their dissatisfaction with Gocool – and Chairman Steve Surujbally. In fact, even while the commission attempted to follow the rules to ensure the last election results were accurate, the opposition marched in front of the PRIVATE RESIDENCES of the two gentlemen and demanded their ouster! After convincing their supporters they would win the elections to bring them out to the polls, they couldn’t wait for their ‘coronation’. Well, we all know they didn’t succeed then. But that didn’t mean they gave up: they just bided their time. And we arrive at the renewal of contract issue.
Now Gocool Boodhoo is simply the most experienced person on the GECOM front. Period. And it’s because of this they want him out: there’ll be no one to prevent their intended hanky-panky. The three commissioners nominated by the opposition claim they’re rejecting Boodhoo’s contract renewal because the man made a computational error towards the fag end of the last elections.
Can you imagine blaming a man for making an error in mathematical analysis – after he’s been up for three days continuously and under tension both at the GECOM headquarters and at his home, to deliver the elections’ results. Or else? Point of the matter is that there’s a system in place with cross-check mechanisms that caught the error. And there was no harm done. Gocool Boodhoo is part of a system.
The chairman made the important point that there’s absolutely no evidence that the computational error was more than just that: an error that anyone can make.
So Boodhoo is to be hung? The commissioners nominated by the opposition are unfortunately acting as if they are the ‘opposition commissioners’. They’re supposed to do what is best for the commission. They are ensuring that the commission will be politicised – because the commissioners nominated by the government will have to correctly reject the spurious opposition rationale.
The decision will then come down to the chairman, who has an original and a casting vote. He has to do the right thing and retain Boodhoo. He should know that if he goes along with the present venality, the long knives will soon be out for him.
City Hall no-nonsense
Carol Sooba is another person who’s not surprisingly raised hackles (and worse) since she was appointed as the Town Clerk (ag.) “And why not?” the opposition’s crying! Finding a veritable Augean Stable – both literally and figuratively – in the council which is in charge of running our capital’s affairs, she’s had the gall to demand that people actually do the jobs they’re paid to do. And without bribes.
This, of course, is a revolutionary concept to the opposition – especially to its most senior executive – Hamilton Green. Government and public posts are sinecures offered as reward for opposition services rendered in the political realm.
Green exemplifies the species perfectly.
More often than not, he’s on some junket or other at either the public’s expense or some foreign sponsor impressed with his ‘mayoral credentials’. He’s been a mayor for almost twenty years, he boasts. He doesn’t mention that he’s never had to face a re-election. He should pass over half of all the gifts he collects to the Committee on Local Government that has bungled the rules for new elections for over a decade.
Tell it like it is
Old time human resources manager Nowrang Persaud had the gall to tell it like it is: Guyanese workers better shape up or they’ll have to ship out in a globalised world. Expect the TUC to demand his head.
After the storm
April 2, 2013 By
Phagwah’d out
While not of the Hindu persuasion, your ever vigilant Eyewitness enjoys Phagwah as much as your average Ramdular down the street. How could he not? Did he not, as a boy, make sure he was there to watch the Holika conflagration? There’s probably a pyrotechnist lurking in every one of us – and it certainly manifests itself most fully when we’re young. To look at those flames reaching for the skies and hear the crackling of the combustion, awaken very primeval emotions.
Maybe it goes back to our caveman ancestors who’d tamed fire, but was always wary of what could happen if they allowed it to get out of control. Morbid fascination in the modern age. I ambled over to the local Holi pyre the other night, but sadly the mound wasn’t as high as I’d remembered. Or was it that I’d gotten taller since those bygone years? Anyhow what was absent for sure were boys hurling coconuts on wire tethers into the burning pyre, to be roasted.
No wonder the dental business is booming these days: weren’t we assured that if we ate the roasted coconuts from the Holi fire we’d have ‘strong teeth’? Your humble Eyewitness is a living testament to the truth of that claim… all his pearly whites are still there. Even if they might not be as pearly as they used to be. Nasty smoking habit of a dissolute youth.
Even though it’s been years since I went around the block – much less the street – dousing everybody on Holi morning, I do come to the front of my yard to be duly inundated by the roaming bands of children. And I so did Wenesday. I even had my bucket primed and waiting to return the favour.
Nowadays, most people seemed to have forgotten that the smearing of the ashes from the Holi fire was supposed to be auspicious.
I take the vermillion abeer and powder in good spirit, but if the truth be told, they do seem to exacerbate my sinuses.
What makes the process quite painless; however (much less painless) are the sweetmeats that accompany the imparting of the colours. Mrs Eyewitness may make one or two sweets on Phagwah… but nothing like the concoctions that issue from the kitchens of my Hindu neighbours. Just to gaze at them is to get an immediate sugar high! So today we’re back to the regular world. The signs of Wednesday’s revelries still abound, but the world is a bit more humdrum, isn’t it?
After the budget…
One would’ve thought that with Holi in the air (literally) some of the political types would give the budget a rest.
God knows that for the next month or so we’ll be hearing about it enough. But there are some who neither water nor sweetmeats will deter from their appointed rounds of bashing the budget. Most of them were from the expatriate brigade in New York.
But maybe we can understand their frustration… not much Holi up there in the cold basements they inhabit. The dyspeptic duo Rose and “Thunderbolt” Singh weighed in that “This is just a plain vanilla tax, borrow, and spend budget.” Well, hey!! What’s wrong with vanilla? It’s the biggest selling flavour ever… no? Means that it’ll please most of the people out there.
And that’s precisely what the budget does… give something to everyone. As far as taxes go, it seemed to escape the refugees that the tax rate has just been reduced from 33 1/ 3 per cent on income over Gy$ 50,000 monthly to 30 per cent! That’s more money in the pockets of ordinary people to spend as they see fit!
Borrow and spend?
Where’s the borrowing to spend? Has the cold in NY frozen their eyes (their brains we know have been frozen for a long time), so they couldn’t read that we ran a surplus this year?
Dunce cap
April 2, 2013 By
Flat Earther
Believe it or not, there is a bunch of people who still believe the earth is flat. Yup! You heard that right. They even have a ‘Flat Earth Society” (FES) that informs us, for instance, that the moon landing was a hoax, What else can it be when the moon’s only a thirty-two foot disc, not much bigger than Leguan. Antarctica is a 150 foot wall around our flat Earth which prevents the oceans from falling off. “Glenn” Mook Lall, owner of the Muckraker KN, is the current president of the FES.
Now you don’t become president of the FES just like that. You have to demonstrate by some public action that you support the beliefs of the society. Why else you think the Mook recently forced his workers to join him in that demonstration? You think all those people are as wacko as the Mook? Those people know that the Earth is a sphere – so its surface is curved.
That’s why you can’t see forever and there’s a horizon. We see in a straight line (because light travels in a straight line) and the ‘horizon’ is where the earth curves below the straight line from our eyes. Now the Mook, as a Flat Earther, doesn’t believe in this horizon stuff and that’s why he can’t understand why more than one frequency is needed to broadcast radio or TV beyond the horizon.
Now the president, who’s obviously a very patient man, tried to explain all of this to the Mook the other day. But how do you explain “colour” to a colour-blind man? Or calculus to a cow? But you got to hand it to the president – he really tried. He told the Mook that with a normal person (not the Mook who’s quite short on many things) the horizon is about three miles. If you have a tower three hundred feet, the horizon (and broadcasting reach) extends to about thirty miles in all directions.
If you try to repeat the signal at the same frequency, it’ll interfere with the original signal – so you need a new frequency. Beyond the new horizon, you can repeat the old frequency. Alternatively, the president said you can use a very high tower to increase your horizon or broadcasting reach. To reach Crabwood Creek from Georgetown on a single frequency you’d need a towering tower more than one mile high!
Maybe the Mook can build one! He can even bring in Chinese labour! But since the earth is flat, the Mook doesn’t need to, right?
Irony
They say we’re now in a post-modern world where irony is the only option to express what’s going on. Well, it might very well be so, going by what’s going on in our schools. In that institution of ‘learning’ where we send our little darlings to imbibe the skills that would take them through life, the UN’s been waging a determined – but largely unsuccessful – battle to abolish corporal punishment.
But teachers and parents would have none of it. “What would the world come to?!” they scream, “If we stop beating the little ones like snakes? This is the only way to instill ‘discipline’ in children, who, we all know are born as wild animals. It’s for their own good and we must beat them because we love them.”
So children grow up firmly convinced that beating and violence are part and parcel of human interaction: we “beat” when we think the other person is doing something ‘wrong’. The irony enters the picture when the children, who’ve learnt the lesson well, turn the tables and start beating teachers. As happened at Linden.
We’re not saying that’s the whole story but let’s start by eliminating corporal punishment.
For (self) and country
March 22, 2013 By
