…to arms
You gotta hand it to PNC Chairwoman Volda Lawrence. She doesn’t mince words when it comes to staking out ground for the PNC. With an unemployment rate that keeps heading north, who’s gonna get jobs in the public sector – the biggest employer in the land?? Well, duh!! “The only friends I got is PNC so the only people I gon give wuk to is PNC”!!! And, of course, there’s her latest candid call for a “nightshift” of strong young men to come out on election night to “protect the ballot boxes”!!
At least folks know where they stand with Lawrence – which is much better than the two-faced, two-tongued, double-crossing language favoured by PNC Leader David Granger and his ilk!! But the latter dominate the party and they’ve had to go into overdrive to put their spin on Lawrence’s plain talk to convince the masses they’re for “everyone”!! And this is where things can get really comical – if it wasn’t for exposing the dark underside of the human psyches of some of the apologists.
Take long-time WPA and ACDA activist Tacuma Ogunseye, who “argued” that Lawrence’s call for “protecting ballot boxes” was in no way different from Jagan’s call in 1973 for citizens to do the same! Ahhh…where would we be without that small matter of “context” – which Ogunseye has disingenuously ignored!! The PNC had flagrantly rigged the 1968 elections – primarily through “overseas votes” in which horses in England voted! In the 1973 elections, when Burnham announced the GDF would be collecting the ballot boxes – for “protection”! – everyone and even their moron uncle knew another rigging was unfolding. Hence Cheddi’s call.
But presently, when all the logistics of ballot transport have been arranged – by the Police – AFTER the ballots had already been counted at the polling station – unlike in 1973 – what’s the need to “protect” ballot boxes?? Ogunseye claims Lawrence was referring to “PPP strongholds” when she called for her “nightshift”! In these areas, the PPP would hijack the ballot boxes and stuff them with pre-marked ballots?? When has that ever occurred? In 2015, the claim was made in Sophia and even though PNC leaders confirmed nothing untoward had been done to ballot boxes by PPP supporters, one house was torched…and a riot narrowly averted.
On the other hand, in “PNC strongholds”, there have been instances of polling stations rushed by mobs of PNC supporters claiming “disenfranchisement”, etc … and chasing out non-PNC polling agents and demanding to vote even though their names weren’t on the OLE!!
Ogunseye, however, ignores the fact that International Observers in our elections have institutional memory of PNC shenanigans.
Lawrence’s “nightshift” call just forewarned them of what to expect!
…for more taxes
There’s the old cautionary story of killing the goose that laid the golden egg. But maybe the GRA big ones, who once again boasted that they’ve collected more taxes than ever before – up another 13.8 per cent this year! – might appreciate a more pointed bit of advice. This is from an old French statesman: “the great aim of all the governments of the earth is obedience and money. The object is, as the saying goes, to pluck the goose without making it squeal!!” The GRA big ones would know, of course, what happened to the French ruler who ignored the squealing of his geese!!
In Guyana, the goose – the long-suffering taxpayers – have all been crying out that their discretionary income has been whittled away by taxes to such an extent that they’ve been thrown into the ranks of the “precariat”: the working poor whose insecure lives have become akin to running on a treadmill that moving so fast they keep slip slidin’ away!!
They should remember that the Ides of March is considered a very unlucky time of the year!!
…to the dead??
Your Eyewitness saw a most disgusting scene circulating on social media. Here it was a Minister of the Government launched into a campaign spiel literally over a dead body that had been lowered into his grave!!
O tempora!! O mores!!