…on racism charge
Let’s lay some facts on the table before the issue de jour. In 2015, APNU courted the AFC to go into the election on a common slate. By that time, the PNC had absorbed five putative “parties” to form APNU. But none of them, the WPA, NFA, GAP etc, had any significant followings to buttress the PNC. With Nagamootoo coming aboard the AFC in 2011 – and Trotman suddenly stricken with some mysterious physical and spiritual ailments and conceding the leadership to Ramjattan – the party had picked up in 2011 significant support in Berbice.
The PNC-led APNU craved sugar and rice farmers’ votes to beat the PPP but claimed it wanted to form a “national unity government” of all ethnic groups. It so badly wanted the AFC it promised them 40% of the Cabinet and the Prime Ministership to Nagamootoo, to get them to tie the knot on Valentine Day, 2015: the Cummingsburg Accord. The PNC thus explicitly recruited AFC for their 11% sugar workers and rice farmers’ vote and the coalition duly won the elections. The PNC, however, immediately began flexing its muscle unilaterally.
And we arrive at the latest flexing when Granger unilaterally appointed (Chief?) Justice Patterson as the GECOM Chair. While we now know Ramjattan and the newly returned (and healed) leader of the AFC, Trotman secretly agreed with Granger, the membership balked because the former publicly claimed they weren’t “consulted”.
The Chairman of the AFC NY Chapter, Dr Somar wrote the AFC leadership: “This unilateral appointment by the PNC Executive President of an Afro-Guyanese GECOM Chairman, whether right or wrong, rips open the scars of PNC rigging the election. You have just thrown red meat to the notion of ‘PNC rigging election’ which, in my view, will cause [the government] to forever lose Indo-Guyanese support at the polls.”
Now how dare he try to be the boy who pointed out Emperor (Granger) had no clothes??!! The “Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy” (CGID) indignantly protested: “Dr Somar’s suggestion that an African-Guyanese Chairman of the GECOM will automatically cause the multi-ethnic coalition government to lose Indian votes is the textbook definition of racism and racial profiling.”!!
Now, if the AFC was overtly courted for its “race” vote and an action by Granger will cause that “race” vote to vanish, how can Somar’s analysis be racist??
And what about Minister Cathy Hughes crudely summarising the response to Granger’s Unilateralism?
…on the colour green
Is Adam Harris, editor of the Muckraker, playing the fool or what – on the colour green which Granger first daubed on the Office of the President and now State House? Of course, it all has to do with the colour! While the National Trust has to invoke its narrow mandate about tenants altering its protected sites, citizens aren’t constrained to point out the wider symbolism of the chosen new colour.
As a columnist in the Muckraker repeatedly and correctly points out, context is critical when evaluating statements or actions. “Green” is the PNC’s colour as well as APNU’s, and one has to be both historically and colour blind not to make the connection between Granger’s symbolic action and the PNC’s historic insistence on party paramountcy. In addition to the historical context, there’s Granger’s vow to continue the legacy of Burnham and his insistence on Executive Supremacy to interpret the Constitution.
Guyanese don’t need flambeau to see the significance of “green” in broad daylight!
…on oil
Is only now discovered what the Eyewitness has been saying for over a year? That when the contract with Exxon was renegotiated by Trotman, oil was already discovered.
There was no risk like when Janet made the contract in 1999.