Bring out the violin…

Beatification

We spoke about the beatification of Burnham by his revisionist acolytes – some like Kissoon and Harripaul, newly converted by the opportunism of “the enemy of my enemy is my saint”! The common enemy – need one say – is the PPP. Well, it appears as we were writing our piece, Burnham’s hand-picked successor, Desmond Hoyte was also being canonised – by former head of the reform, Stanley Ming.

It would appear that these fellows would leave no stone unturned in justifying their dancing with the devil.

Who was Desmond Hoyte? In 1967, he was Burnham’s point man on the Elections Commission that introduced rigging into Guyana. You wouldn’t hear about that from Ming.

Hoyte was rewarded with the strategic post of Minister of Home Affairs in 1969. Ming talks about Hoyte reforming Guyana’s economy in 1989, but disingenuously omitted that it was Hoyte, as Finance Minister between 1970 and 1972, who oversaw the disastrous experiment into co-operative socialism that ravaged our economy.

So we should praise Hoyte for accepting the 1989 IMF programme when he had plunged us into the mess to begin with? So what about the fact that in 1985, Hoyte rigged the elections to give himself a majority greater than anything Burnham had ever dared attempt? There’s all this talk about him being the ‘great democrat’ for ‘accepting the 1992 elections results’! He had no choice! The USSR had fallen. The Americans had no problems with Jagan then. They just pulled the rug from under the PNC. Carter delivered the news first hand.

And directly out of office, he paid back Jagan’s no witch-hunting, no recrimination policy towards the PNC by declaring the PPP had started “ethnic cleansing”. He unleashed protests and riots in the streets of a burning Georgetown after the 1997 elections. People forget that Andrew Douglas was a lieutenant of the criminal Blackie London whose coffin Hoyte draped with Guyana’s flag.

Just recently Kissoon (approvingly) reminded us of Hoyte’s “mo fyah, slow fyah” strategy that nearly tore the country apart. And for all of this he’s a ‘saviour’ and a ‘saint’? There are none so blind as those who would not see!

APNU grandstanding

PNC’s Debbie Backer issued a torrid criticism – as opposed to a critique expected from a member of the bar – on Justice Chang’s ruling. On the question of allegations of rape and as to the best way to deal with it, we thought PNC leader Corbin might have more expertise in the matter?