Christmas Grinches

Civil disobedience

Hamilton Green’s a man who can deliver a deeply held anti-government diatribe on any topic faster than the speed of thought. Whatever the subject, we can count on the erstwhile mayor to weigh in – even though his capacity for carelessness with the facts almost amounts to genius.
Let’s take the latest tempest in a teacup raised by the owner of the Muckraker, as he pursues his envy-suffused vendetta against Radio 89.5. (He doesn’t seem to realise that he’s giving great publicity to the new station!! Or he’s too apoplectic with rage to care? ) Green disagrees with fellow opposition scribbler Emile Mervin who’d advised those not granted licences to file a “class-action suit”.
Never mind the Appellate Court had ruled, when handing down the order that forced the government to grant the licence creating Radio 89.5, that there’s no fundamental right to getting radio licences. The government has a vested right to regulate free speech and, of course, to allocate the broad spectrum. But Green says enough of that namby-pamby “rule of law” nonsense.
Green, to his credit, is only remaining true to form. Older folks would remember his role in the 1960s when he earned his reputation of being “Burnham’s thug”. Younger folks would remember him rejecting Hoyte’s acceptance of ‘free and fair’ elections in 1992. The PNC should have kept on rigging elections to keep holding on to power!! After Hoyte banished him post-1992, he’s back in the PNC’s executive. Hence the need to hear what the man advises: the PNC still has its street elements.
Green exhorts his troops: “It is my considered opinion that only two parallel options are available in order to save Guyana.” And what are these? “Prayer!” says this born-again ‘moral re-armament’ believer (he says!). The ‘boys’ should look ‘on high’ and pray for ‘divine help’. But while you can take the man from the streets, evidently you can’t take the streets out of Hamilton Green.
He next declares: “Guyana now needs to take the struggle to the next level by getting in a revolutionary mode – starting with civil disobedience”. This’s right out of the 1960s playbook Green executed so well for the PNC. “Civil-disobedience” then meant ‘sit-ins’ in front of Parliament and other government buildings and schools.
The plan was to unleash provocateurs, forcing the police to react and then precipitate mass violence. It plunged Guyana into civil war then. What now?

Armchair generals
Eusi Kwayana, the ‘sage of Buxton’ who’s gravitated to the land of ‘flower power’ – California – took one interlocutor, Sultan Mohamed, to task on behalf of his protégé Clive Thomas. The point Mohamed was making was that when Thomas pontificates week after week on sugar, he’s doing so totally from a theoretical standpoint. Thomas has absolutely no hands-on experience with sugar.
All he does is to string together words cribbed from words that other economists had strung together. And he’s double dipping as usual – charging the Stabber for excerpts from some study he putting together for some MFI, which will then use it to beat Guyana over the head! Kwayana takes offence because Mohamed phrased his criticism as Thomas never even sold ‘fried plantains at a street corner’. Kwayana, with ‘race’ always on his mind, sees a racist slur in this statement!
But Kwayana forgets that Thomas’ entire career of stringing together words has led to nothing. Where is his 1970s famous answer to ‘dependency’ and ‘underdevelopment’, to wit that we cut off all linkages to the West? In the dustbin, that’s where.
If he’s sold some plantain chips, like Rabbi Washington, at least he might have a building at Hopetown.

Tit for Tat?
APNU’s Granger is whining that the government’s “The Government of Guyana’s Briefing to international and regional bodies on the post-November 28, 2011 general elections”, is a riposte to their dossier: “GINA causing tensions between Govt, Opposition”. The government shouldn’t respond? Oh dear!