Category: Eyewitness

…on oil US Ambassador Perry Halloway offered an excellent bit of advice to those Guyanese commenting on our incipient “Oil Industry”: just “bone up” on it before mouthing off. Of course, being a diplomat (a career one at that, and not one of those “political appointees”) he didn’t put it so bluntly. But he obviously knows of what he speaks, since he spent all of his previous stints in drug infested Latin American capitals. At the time of his posting (2014), drugs would’ve been the only substance making Guyana show…

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…of the big enchilada Readers would know what they say about “Freudian slips”! You know the truth, your listeners know the truth…but you can’t utter it for fear of embarrassing yourself. So you open your mouth to tell the concocted tale, and out jumps the truth! Oooops!! Freudian slip!! So the Administration knew from day one since they stepped into the Government they’ve been staggering from one disaster to another. We can start with the appointment of Ministers, when after berating the PPP for years about having a top heavy…

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…on food There’s been a lot of talk about food recently in Guyana. Could it be because hunger stalks the land? People talk about what they don’t get, don’t they? We don’t talk about the air here, do we? But we would if we had the pollution of, say, Mexico City!! So back to the food talk. Or is it because of Diwali? Your Eyewitness just learnt Diwali began an autumn post-harvest festival!! Food! Pressie went up to Linden and preached a new message: “Food it is; not bauxite and…

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…and the PNC Your Eyewitness would concede we all revise our history — especially at the personal level — to present a better face to the world. But if we want to maintain our credibility, we have to keep the revision within tolerable limits, don’t we? Like Trotman claiming he’s suddenly an expert in the petroleum industry!! Folks have to pick themselves off the floor – suffering from paroxysms of laughter when they hear that whopper!! And it’s also the same with institutions — perhaps even more so — because…

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…bleeding for killers Did you, dear reader, know yesterday, was “World Day against death penalty”. Yep!! There’s a day for that also. Well if the UN took time to declare such a day, maybe we ought to think a bit about it, shouldn’t we? One of the local worthies, who makes a living at this sort of thing, declared that the death penalty is about “revenge” rather than “deterrence”. Well, golly Miss Molly! If a person’s already been killed, what’s the use to HIM on whether the killer’s deterred from…

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…to recognise and honour Once again, your Eyewitness is more than a tad befuddled – this time by the National Awards handing out ceremony. Here it was, Prezzie explained, “The national honour system is about service”: concrete service to the country and community in some way or other. But he was hard pressed to understand both the rhyme and the reason for some of these awards. Right up there were the awards to the three journalists who’d been servicing the PNC’s interests through thick and thin these past three decades…

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…in years The PNC’s about to turn 60 and under the fig leaf of its APNU cover, it’s busy painting the towns (and country!) green. In case you didn’t put “two and two” together, that means the PNC’s almost a decade older than independent Guyana!! It also means the PNC has a history and an institutional memory and debts to pay – not to mention skeletons in its closet it mightn’t want to have unearthed at this time!! The history of the PNC is all about its “Founder Leader” Forbes…

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…with gas Back in the day, original hipsters like Frank Sinatra introduced the Irish expression “It’s a gas!” — meaning a fun activity — into the general lexicon. The pronouncements of the Guyana Government on the gas found off our shores by Exxon associated with petroleum show clearly that their spokesmen are no hipsters! But yet, like Frank, they insist on doing things “their way”; though, in the end, Guyana gets it in the end! Let’s step back a bit with this gas business, shall we, dear reader? Right after…

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…on land giveaway On Sept 19th, Prezzie spoke to the regional press corps on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, and made an intervention on Hurricane relief for the just battered Caribbean islands. GINA reported the Ministry of the Presidency’s press release the same day on its website: “Guyana stands in solidarity with Dominica, ready to offer support”. There was not a word about what form the “support” would take. However, CARICOM followed up the next day (9/20) with some more details on their website, which, for some reason,…

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…not the cause Burnham had a penchant for flaunting his “erudition” – which mostly centred on the studied phrases he’d drop in conversations and speeches. With lawyers of his generation having to cram a whole list of Latin phrases, these were liberally trotted out at the drop of a hat. One of his favourites was to make the distinction between “casus belli” – the occasion used to justify a war and “causa belli” – the real cause of the war. So back in 1963, for instance, Burnham’s 80-day strike by…

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