Category: Eyewitness

…and Ramjattan Your Eyewitness was intrigued by the headline in the Chronic – “Ramjattan allays security fears of Chinese business community”. Now, he’d been reading almost every day of another “break and enter” of a Chinese business…and not only in Georgetown, but all over our fair land. He’d wondered if the Chinese were now seen by the burglary fraternity as the “easy marks” of Guyana. One Chinese business had been robbed four times in as many months! Not so long ago, when the “troubles” (as labelled by Granger) were in…

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…with teaching reforms Your Eyewitness has repeated the caution of the strong possibility of “a slip between the cup and the lip” on the matter of teachers’ salaries, now that they’ve accepted going to binding arbitration. But he feels it’s as good a time as any to talk a bit about other matters that have to be cleaned up in the education sector, whether or not teachers get their fair shake. We’ve got to accept we’ve been caught with our pants (and skirts) down on being educated in the oil…

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…in September The Opposition Leader revealed that the Cabinet’s taking a “recess”. He allowed he knows it’s the tradition of Parliament to go into recess…but never Cabinet!! Now, this had some logic to it: after all, Parliament’s supposed to pass laws and debate budgets and such like…all of which have designated timelines. And, then again, after eating G$700,000 of food, and (mostly) liquour, at EVERY sitting (which might’ve induced some “lying” – down!!) MPs HAVE to take a break. From all that rich food, there’s the ever-present danger of them…

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…COP Your Eyewitness is intrigued by President Granger’s proclivity for coming up with new “criteria” when selecting top officials for the various Government and State institutions. When choosing the Chair of GECOM, he insisted for the longest while that if the person wasn’t a judge, he or she must have “judge-like” qualities. Your Eyewitness thought the President was insisting that the person be “sober” – from the oft-quoted phrase “sober as a judge” – even though he knew of quite a few members of the Bench who “had a thing”…

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…comes around for TT “Brother, can you spare a dime?” was a song that became the anthem of America’s Great Depression. It spoke of folks who were once on the top of the (economic) heap now looking for handouts when the bubble burst. “Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time./ Say, don’t you remember, I’m your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?” Looks like the Trinis have learnt the tune now that their oil’s run out and they’ve had to shut down…

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…in new (loan) decanters What Barnum said about “a sucker is born every minute” also applies to countries – and they both originate greed. But that shouldn’t surprise us any, should it? China just invited practically every country in Africa to its 2018 Summit of the “Forum on China-Africa Cooperation” (FOCAC) to once again promote its Belt and Road Initiative in Africa. At the last FOCAC summit, in 2015 in South Africa, a reported US$60 billion of Chinese loans were thrown around… with nary a concern about ‘debt burdens’ expresse!…

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…in Venezuela If there was any doubt that Venezuela’s meltdown had reached a point of no-return, it was put to rest by the US Congressional Delegation’s visit to Guyana and its other neighbours. With 2.3 million refugees having fled a country with the largest reserves of oil in the world – even more than Saudi Arabia! – neighbours like Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia may be more willing to consider the most radical ‘solution” to this regional crisis: regime change via military intervention. When President Trump suggested that option last…

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…and off his rocker Your Eyewitness is getting worried about PM Nagamootoo. No, it’s not about him being shafted out of what he was promised in Cummingsburg. He clearly enjoys “shafting”, since he so revels in being reduced to a weekly columnist in the Chronic! The worry’s actually about his brain’s getting enough oxygen to function properly! Take his first article — “Plight of the refugees” — after returning from his check-up in the States. He launched into a long and meandering attack on (who else?) his bete noir, Bharrat…

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…the political tree With the demise of the AFC, another third foot is about to be dropped in the political arena. The outspoken ex- Vice Chairman of the National Toshaos Council, Lenox Shuman, has finally given a date for the launch of the second Indigenous political party. Let us not forget that, try as it might to shake its original name – the Guyana Amerindian Party – by changing it to “Guyana Action Party”, it remained to the end an Indigenous Peoples’ party in the eyes of Guyanese. And it’s…

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…galore It used to be said that Guyana – unlike its West Indian neighbours – didn’t suffer from natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. God figured the “unnatural” disaster called “Burnham” was enough of an infliction on us!! But of recent, even though Granger’s vowed to continue Burnham’s legacy, it looks like he can’t measure up to his mentor, since there’s been a number of seismic events in the land recently. We can start with the tremor felt across the land with the outcome of the PNC Biennial Congress. Here…

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