Eye-pass

Town backras
Not even a year has passed since the death of the great iconic artist and sculptor Philip Moore. The same motley crew that is now posturing and protesting about the site of the 1823 Monument had made just as much noise about giving the man a state funeral and constructing a ‘meditation centre’ for him in Georgetown. Never mind that the relatives of the man indicated that the great African visionary had wanted to be interred in his home village of Lancaster on the Corentyne Coast.
This newspaper had challenged these pot-salts to construct the ‘meditation centre’ in Lancaster and had volunteered a donation. None of these so-called guardians of our African heritage responded and the ‘monument’ to Moore is now forgotten. The whole contretemps was to score cheap political points by further deepening the country’s ethnic cleavages. Moore had called these people “town backras”. “Backra”, of course, in the colonial days, signified the ‘white man’. Moore had encountered the mimic-men early in his career – when he came up to Georgetown in the 1950s at Burrowes. They laughed at his work then. They laughed at his country ways. They were “town backras” – and by definition their opinions counted over those of country bumpkins. Never mind that they never had an original thought in their lives and slavishly imitated the Europeans, who scorned and laughed at them behind their backs.
So here you have these town backras insisting that a memorial to an event that took place entirely on the East Coast – by the people of East Coast – must be in the heart of Georgetown rather than the beginning of the East Coast Highway. Of course, the best site might be more in the centre of the East Coast where the rebellion was centred – but at least the present site – agreed to by the sculptor of the monument – has the virtue of high visibility to all Guyanese.
And these backras have the temerity to insult the artist by claiming he just wants visibility for his work!!! What are their reasons for wanting to site the monument at the Parade Ground? A few of the rebels were tried, executed, and impaled there. Can you believe this kind of reasoning? Remember the executions and not the rebellion! Of course, you can’t. Because the reasoning has nothing to do with the rebellion and everything about playing politics. Wanker backras!
Militarising society
We’ve often pointed out the truism: to a hammer, everything is a nail.
To David Granger, a career military man, every societal challenge demands a military solution. Unemployment among youths in Guyana? Bring back the Guyana National Service! Never mind that every country in the world that pulled itself out of poverty and into high employment did so through job creation by private enterprise.
So here we have Granger declaring that there are lapses in emergency services in the interior. And his response? Bring back the Guyana Peoples’ Militia! Why aren’t we surprised? Granger’s thinking is rooted in a philosophy that was promulgated by his mentor and hero – Forbes Burnham. As a true fascist, the latter believed he had to ‘mould’ Guyanese into automatons that would reflexively do whatever he wanted. He, of course, knew best. The vehicle to accomplish the transformation was the military. So we had probably the greatest explosion of military institutions in the world – the Guyana Defence Force (with land, air and sea wings); the Guyana National Service; the Guyana Peoples’ Militia; the Guyana National Guard and the armed YSM and WRSM. One soldier to every 30 Guyanese: better than the teacher to student ratio!
BRIDGE
It appears that we’re getting closer to a new permanent bridge across the Demerara River. We recommend that the toll be doubled (still a steal at Gy$ 200) and the construction can be financed from revenues.