Eyes wide open

Opposition sabotage
We didn’t need a poll to tell us the opposition’s been sabotaging the government’s development programme. But it’s good to know the NACTA poll confirmed that a whole lot of ordinary folks in the street have their eyes wide open when it comes to the stunts the opposition have been pulling. They’ve obviously wised up to the yawning chasm between their ‘sweet talk’ on the campaign train and the reality of their mean and vindictive actions on the budget. I mean, how could they ever justify voting Gy$ 1 to fund the ERC. Whatever opinion one may have about the ERC, the man-in-the-street knows that with their majority in the Parliament, the opposition could have ensured that it fulfilled its mandate by insisting the ERC deal with ethnic discrimination. But, they know the opposition cynically want the ERC killed so they can whip up ethnic insecurities by crying ‘racism!’ – knowing that there’s no ERC to investigate.
Then there’s the Specialty Hospital. How many Guyanese are dying, because they don’t have the advanced medical care available in the developed countries? The Specialty Hospital would bring such care to Guyana at a fraction of the cost. It would attract people from those same developed countries to make use of the facilities (bucks from ‘medical tourism’) while servicing locals. How much more of a win-win situation can you get? What else is it but sabotage of the highest order when the opposition find one excuse from another to stymie the hospital’s construction? The biggest sabotage has been their undermining of confidence in the projects to transform the country’s development profile.
Take the Amaila Falls Hydro Electric Project (AFHEP). How can the opposition oppose a project to remove our dependency on fossil fuels (fast disappearing and costs rising) while also replacing it with our green and inexhaustible hydropower? They point to the high cost. High cost relative to what? They should be looking at the opportunity cost – that is, the loss to us if we don’t make the investment. Once the large initial investment is amortised, Guyana will be providing electricity at virtually no cost for decades. We would just have to take care of the maintenance. There’s also the obstacles being placed in the effort to upgrade the CJI Airport. Have the opposition no vision to see the benefits of servicing Brazil, a burgeoning superpower, by air as well as land (highway). Enough of the saboteurs!
Blind muse of history?
Talking about ‘no vision’, there’s some people who’re confusing Lady Law with Clio, the Muse of History. The former may be blind but the latter certainly is not. So we have Harry Hergash and Freddy Kissoon rewriting history to rehabilitate Peter D’Aguiar as if people with personal experiences of the period aren’t around. And haven’t been struck blind. We don’t bother much with Kissoon, we know even though he claims to have a master’s in history (didn’t he use to say it was a doctorate?), he is such an inveterate fabricator of ‘facts’ that he wouldn’t  ecognize one if it crept up and bit him on his behind. Anyhow, it appears Hergash is one of those who bend over backwards to appear to be ‘fair’. So while admitting that D’Aguiar’s “foray into national politics had disastrous consequences for the country”, he ‘balances’ this with, “And the PPP too, in sidelining Mr D’Aguiar and his party, drove him into coalition with the PNC.” Say what??!!! D’Aguiar’s whole raison d’être was anti-communism: he wouldn’t be caught dead with the PPP. Like Faust, he cut a deal with the devil – and paid the price.