Category: Eyewitness

Blackmail It was Martin Carter who might have given the opposition the theme for their axe-wielding on the budget: the mouth is muzzled by the hand that feeds it. Carter, after all, was referring to Burnham’s vindictive and belittling control after the latter had appointed him as minister of information. It was the spitefulness and petty mindedness of the insecure tyrant who could not stand the possibility that Carter would outshine him. And it is so that the wankers in the opposition are insistent that the government of President Ramotar…

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Confounded nonsense! With so many of us having relatives in New York, we might have heard the Yiddish expression “Chutzpah”– pronounced “hutz-pah”. It means “insolence”, “utter nerve”; “effrontery” as in: “During the budget debate, APNU and AFC had the chutzpah to act as if they had a lock on God and morality.” Well, Nigel Hughes, just demonstrated another bit of chutzpah in a letter to the Stabber. You remember Nigel Hughes, don’t you? SC and top biller on the AFC ticket – much to Ramjattan’s consternation. The poor wanker Ramjattan…

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It is said that those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. The Greeks experienced a lot of madness in their time and saw entire peoples destroyed. It is not by coincidence that the Greeks pretty much invented tragedies. The AFC and its entire leadership corps have definitely gone bonkers and destruction cannot be very far away. If it were just a matter of the few demented leaders driven crazy by their hatred of the PPP, because they see the latter as standing in their way to…

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Quislings Over the years, axe murderers have gained considerable notoriety because of the absolute gruesomeness of their bloody goings-on. It’s spawned a whole genre of horror films. The mindlessness of the perpetrators – evident in the wild lopping off of heads and eviscerations of guts – just leave the horrified spectator agape. That’s the identical reaction of many to the wild chops the combined opposition have now proposed to the budget. They make axe murderers look like choir boys. Where is the rhyme and reason for some of these chops…

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A good deed Lest it be said that the Eyewitness has a jaundiced eye (it may be red, but never yellow!) we take cognisance today of a good deed done by the good old ex-brigadier. Now you know we couldn’t possibly be speaking of Granger… we mean Joe Singh. The good general (the U.S. calls them ‘general’) wrote a heart-warming letter to the press that the 200th anniversary of the naming of our capital as “Georgetown” will fall this May 5. In a pretty civic lesson, he reminds us that…

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As an ex-British colony, it is interesting to note the variations in slang in other ex- colonies to denote the same phenomenon. Take the British term ‘wanker’ to refer a bit more acidly to someone who is a real idiot, and which is very common in Australia and New Zealand. The Americans use the substitute “jerk” – like “Romney is a real jerk”, which of course is an abbreviation of literal equivalent “jerk- off”. As Wiki observes dryly, “one connotation, implying egotistical and self-indulgent behaviour (and more analogous to American…

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AFC Bondage When Ramjattan and Trotman ran off together from the PPP and PNC to start the AFC, they didn’t relinquish their seats in Parliament. The two lawyers defended their action with devious sophistry. They claimed that they were representing the people who had voted for them and so they could not be removed by the PPP or PNC. They waxed eloquently about the ‘free mandate’ theory of representation: an MP should have the right to vote his ‘conscience’ rather than being forced to go along with the party. To…

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Alarmists Back in 1990, the PNC government privatised the local telephone company. It was one of forty corporations the dictatorship had on the block even though it was a lame-duck administration. Elections, scheduled for that year had deferred to 1992 because of a padded voters’ list. Most of these corporations were practically given away – with money obviously flowing like rivers under the table. 80 per cent of the Guyana Telecommunications Corporation (GTC), which was earning about US$3 million annually, was sold to the totally unknown ATN of the Virgin…

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Outcast We understand Aubrey Norton’s angst. Really we do. Summarily thrown out on his ear from the chairmanship of the PNC by Hoyte (the “General Secretary is my ‘creature’”), he’s had a devil of a time in getting back into the swing of things. For a while he thought he stood a chance when he betrayed his buddy Mac Allister in the Team Alexander manoeuvre to oust Corbin. But Corbin, like Burnham decades before with Hamilton Green, knew about naked ambition and ensured Norton remained on the periphery. Granger followed…

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Thunderbolt strikes Just when we thought that Sase “Thunderbolt” Singh has lost his masochistic need for licks, up he comes with another letter filled with his half-baked reasoning. Get this (if you can). “Democracy is not about the popular will… it is about protecting the fundamental human rights of all Guyanese.” So where did this imperative to protect everyone’s human right come from, Thunderbolt? Isn’t it what the people want? And what else is that but the “general will”, you dolt??!! Anyhow, let’s pass over that and get to the…

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