Category: Eyewitness

Your Eyewitness has heard about “the other foot” falling to confirm what had been suspected in shady deals, but needed further confirmation. But on this Georgetown Parking Meter abomination that’s been shoved down the throats of Guyanese, so many feet have been falling, it’s clear a centipede has been let loose in our midst! And we know who’s that centipede, don’t we?! But yet nothing’s being done by those above to rein in on the Town Clerk and Mayor who reign over us like Stalin executing one his more notorious…

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…on the economy It’s clear Finance Minister Winston Jordan still doesn’t get it about why his insistence on stressing increased gold production in keeping the economy on its growth trajectory isn’t cutting any ice with anyone. So why isn’t he giving the Public Servants their promised “substantial” raise if the economy’s doing so well. Most recently he was challenged by PPP’s shadow finance maven Irfaan Ali when he blurted we should consider ourselves “lucky” for the role of gold. Is this guy for real? So this is what’s supposed to…

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…AFC Old people do warn: “all smart fly does end up in cow backside”. And when these smart flies get entangled with the stuff in that orifice, it’s hell no hell to get out! Well it looks like the AFC and its “smart flies” are up to their neck in “entanglement” with what one of their fervent supporters described as “miasmic substances”. From the moment the spoils were divided up between APNU and AFC after the elections, this Eyewitness – and most AFC supporters – pointed out that notwithstanding what…

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…in bauxite In Guyana, as in the Caribbean as a whole, the political class emerged out of the struggle for workers to be treated like human beings. Plain and simple. Brought to provide labour on the plantations, the powers that be defined them as “workers” – like in “worker bees” – who were fulfilled to produce as much sugar as possible. Not “humanely” possible – just “possible”. Even slavery was justified. You’d think with our politicians coming out of that crucible, they’d be a bit more sensitive not to jerking…

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…after Cummingsburg The coalition relationship between the APNU and AFC was explicitly pursued like a marriage between couples. There was the “getting to know each other phase” during the 10th Parliament, when the logic of controlling the Legislature – if they cooperated – pushed them together. APNU was the pursuer, and they went out of their way to please AFC: originally, for instance, they didn’t think much of the AFC’s “no confidence” gambit – but then went along. The AFC, like most brides, had their last-minute panic attack about whether…

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…but when is a Ministry a ministry? When your humble Eyewitness was in school, his lecturers tried to teach him about a philosophical concept called “nominalism”. Which is to say – if memory serves him right – there aren’t any things called, say, “chairs” – just particular, individual chairs… or trees or whatever. In other words, there are no “universals”, just particulars. It seems the APNU/AFC crowd has some nominalists in their ranks. Take their claim that there isn’t any “Ministry of Social Cohesion” – just a “Minister of Social…

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…from GPSU on contract workers For years and years, Patrick Yarde – President for life of the GPSU – has been jumping up and down about the hordes of “contract workers” the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government hired to perform jobs that Public Service workers were supposed to do. Cynics said it was because the Union dues to cover his salary and perks were reduced that Yarde was upset. Not to mention undermining his ability to blackmail the PPP/Civic through strike action. But last year, in his impassioned testimony to…

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…on suicide Prezzie says he needs more than anecdotal evidence to start acting on our suicide epidemic. With the Ministry of Health having conducted at least half a dozen studies on suicide and launched a Gatekeepers’ Programme, OP forming a National Suicide Secretariat and launching so many initiatives over the last decade, you mean just because the MINISTERS changed, ALL THE governmental INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY WAS FLUSHED DOWN THE DRAINPIPE. That’s a real crying shame, fifty years after independence. Guyana didn’t just hit the top of the suicide hit parade in…

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…over in the States? Used to be that cost folks US$12,500 to get a visa for the US. This was what the fella from INSIDE the Embassy – Carroll – charged with his local confederate who now heads the local Guyana-Cuba Friendship Society. After Carroll and his accomplice were both charged, convicted and jailed back in 2000, the movement of bodies to the States handle skipped a beat. A decade later visas – or getting bodies into the states by whichever way possible – were still going for over US$13,000…

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…in media The President graciously hosted the Guyana Media Association (GMA) for the New Year. In a not-so-subtle reprimand to his Prime Minister Nagamootoo, who was present, he averred that the media has every right to be critical of the government. Not long into the new regime, during the budget debate, Nagamootoo took it upon himself to publicly upbraid a Guyana Chronicle reporter for stating the government had “blundered” in its presentation. After drubbing the reporter’s conclusion of “blundering”, the Prime Minister – who was denied the “governance” portfolio promised…

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