If nothing else, the pilgrimage by the Opposition top brass to Washington to meet the Congressional Black Congress (CBC) – while participating in the “Guyana Conference” organized by their chief hatchet man from Brooklyn – has exposed their utter bankruptcy in honing an effective strategy to get back into office. It started right after they were able to do just that in 2015 – by going into a coalition with the AFC and garner enough votes from outside the PNC’s traditional African base to gain a majority.
Now, a standard rule in politics is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”!! Leave the thing that made you succeed damn well alone!! But the Sanctimonious Gangster just couldn’t help himself; he just had to kick the AFC to the curb by shuttering sugar and throwing thousands of their supporters on the breadline. They thus shot the PNC in the foot – and have been unable to even crawl forward politically, much less rise up. Their screams that the US “installed” the PPP into office – after they were caught in flagrante delicto with their hands in the ballot boxes – didn’t actually endear them with that country.
But this latest trip to Washington has exposed their intellectual bankruptcy further. What’s the point of claiming rampant discrimination against African-Guyanese when you can’t produce the numbers?? Doesn’t this prove that their earlier claims – say, about African contractors being locked out of construction bids – were just so much hot air?? It led to their hosts asking them for proof!!
But the most trenchant implicit criticism was the question “Where’s their development plan?” They were being reminded that an opposition’s gotta show voters that the incumbent government ain’t doing its job, and the opposition has a better plan!! But we in Guyana know this to our cost, don’t we?? Rather than just cussing out the PPP for, say, it’s subsidising the sugar industry, why don’t they come up with an explicit plan as to what they’d do if voted in?? Will they shut down the entire operations?? Their criticisms seem to suggest as much – but why don’t they say it outright?? The problem is they can’t say it, because they’ll have to say what they’d then do with the eight thousand or so remaining workers!! And will then be justifying the PPP’s subsidies from the same social responsibility playbook being used by the Government!!
The PNC – by their inability to formulate policies and recruit leaders who can run Guyana effectively – can then either scamper abroad to beg for interventions to install them into office, as they’re doing now; or try to rig elections.
Nothing’s changed since the sixties – except the PPP’s acceptance of real politik to not tee off the Yanks!!
…from Venezuelan refugees
Hot on the heels of news that a record 400,000 refugees just crossed Panama’s Darien Gap on their way to the USA comes news that a large boat from Venezuela just showed up off Bushy Park, at East Bank Essequibo, and disgorged over 80 Venezuelan refugees. As the Yanks apply pressure at their border to stem the tide of humanity headed their way, we can expect our refugee numbers to rise precipitously. That mass of humanity’s gotta find a way out!
From the reports, we learn that the new refugees have relatives and friends from previous waves, who give them info on where to land, and are there waiting to receive and shelter them. As such, we can expect the refugee numbers to continue to soar. The question is whether we can absorb them without disrupting our already troubled social order!! Was the move to make Spanish our second language meant to deal with this new demographic??
Won’t we then be strengthening Maduro’s claim?
…in the US
The US is again on the verge of a governmental shutdown that’ll deny millions of citizens critical services. So, should we adopt their checks-and-balances structure to allow the PNC to do the same here?
