…the Ides of March
The “Ides of March” was a medieval marker for the 15th of several months – including March – from where one could count how far in the month one had advanced. But the Bard, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, made it eternally famous when he had a soothsayer warn Caesar, “Beware the ides of March”, even as Caesar was surrounded by his closest friends, Brutus and Anthony, and was at the height of popularity, with the masses clamouring to make him king.
Well, for us in Guyana, we don’t even need a soothsayer to remind us that mid-March is going to be a very challenging period, as the PNC insists on trampling on our Constitution to threaten the foundation of our fledgling democracy – delaying free and fair elections to choose the next government. On March 12th, the Appellate Court will be announcing its decisions on the PNC’s second rearguard action to hold off the verdict of the Legislature to have the President and Cabinet resign and have elections scheduled on March 19 – 90 days after the NCM was successfully moved by the Opposition on Dec 21, 2018.
And so “The ides of March” falls smack in the middle of the 12th and the 19th, and we, the Guyanese people, will have to “beware”, because on the 12th March, the Appellate Court would have already certainly tossed out the PNC’s “cock and bull” plea that 33 is not the majority of 65! And on the 19th, the Government would’ve lost whatever legitimacy was left to continue with business as usual!
If the PNC were not the cheating bully it has always been, like other parliamentary democracies such as Britain and India, they would’ve already scheduled elections by March 19th, and been voted out.
But on the Ides of March, your Eyewitness believes the PNC could still try to bluff its way through – by going to the CCJ for a third opinion on the obvious – for clinging to office for another month or so. And this is where the Guyanese people have been forewarned to prevent the PNC from assassinating democracy – as Brutus had done to Caesar. But unlike Brutus, the Guyanese people have no reason to give the benefit of the doubt to the PNC, which has never been a friend to democracy. If we do not head the PNC off at the pass by March 15, we don’t even have the excuse of saying, “E tu, PNC”, since they’ve never displayed anything but treachery and contempt for democracy.
By March 15th, we will have to gird up our loins and prepare to come out into the streets in our numbers.
To show the PNC we will not allow another dictatorship!!
…of PNC’s misdirections
The PNC should be reminded of the folk wisdom, “wha’ rain na full dew cyaan full”. Ever since the NCM pulled the rug from under their bravado (“Bring it on!!) they’ve been rushing here, there and everywhere doling out “goodies”. The Government newspaper has doubled its pages with advertisements of bids for building roads; centres; bridges; playgrounds; airports (including one for US$48 million!!); solar farms; and so on and so forth!! Christmas in March!!
Like Burnham, they’re now threatening to nationalise one bauxite operation – never mind that they eventually destroyed the bauxite industry with their inept management! To show how clueless they are, Raphael Trotman – who sold off the largest oil reserves of the decade for a pittance – took the visiting South African Dep Natural Resource Minister to visit the Bosai BAUXITE operations!!
Hello? SA has absolutely no bauxite mining!! But with gold, they’ve got the deepest underground mines in the world!!
Why not take them to Guyana Goldfields, which is now trying to mine underground??
…of emboldened thieves
Khemraj Ramjattan and his Guyana Police Force have been trying to convince the Guyanese people – by trotting out massaged statistics – that they’ve got crime under control.
The break in at CID Berbice HQ, where all sorts of equipment were burgled, doesn’t help their cause!!