Gnomic Pronunciations

Epiphany?

We’ve spoken before (well, actually “protested” before) of the proclivity of Lincoln Lewis (“Lincoln the Loud”) to bluff and bluster, not to mention ‘rant and rave’. So what are we to make of the latest missive published under his name? (We understand they’re written by someone very close to him.) In unusually subdued tones, Lewis purports to ‘evaluate’ both the executive and the legislative branches of our government, since he says, ‘lead-management of each is in different hands.” Thank goodness he spared us the now barf-inducing phrase, ‘new dispensation’. He makes his pitch for being included in governance through Art 13 – ‘meaningful continual engagement with the stakeholders’. But that’s OK. Self-interest is not a crime.

After a pro forma beating up on the executive – “the PPP’s abuse of the people’s money”, etc – he declared: “As laws and rights remain pillars of democracy, the society can ill afford the continuity for the disregard of the law, the tyranny of the majority, or the exclusion of any group. Going forward all must have an equal stake and must be made to feel so. Importantly too, the focus to overseeing the behaviour of the opponent, or another branch of state, must extend to include overseeing the behaviour of self and group.” Gasp!!! He’s got to be referring to the Opposition’s actions in parliament? “Laws and rights remain pillars of democracy”: This is exactly what the executive is saying in taking the opposition’s flouting of the constitutionally protected rule of proportionality in parliamentary committees.

“The society can ill afford the continuity for the disregard of the law”: That’s right. How will 49.23 per cent of the population feel when its representatives are completely shut out from any input in parliamentary affairs? “The tyranny of the majority, or the exclusion of any group”. Lewis (or his ghost writer, if you insist!) has hit it on the head once again. This is the great danger to democracy when any group uses its majority (in this case by less than one per cent) to completely exclude another group from making any input. And his advice for APNU/ AFC on “overseeing the behaviour of self and group” is so spot-on about their arrogant behaviour. Did Lincoln the Loud have an epiphany?

Trouble in democracy land

We’d already mentioned the high-handed handling by Corbin of the concerns raised by Aubrey Norton at the last PNC General Council meeting. We’d written that Norton had been “sandbagged” by his old coconspirators. Well, Norton has now provided us with the details of the ambush in the PNC, which we have been assured is at the cutting edge of democracy in Guyana. And there are still people who believe in the tooth fairy!

Norton raised a matter from a year ago to which he had been promised (in writing) a response: “a senior executive member of the PNCR had forged a document in respect of the elections held at the District level more than a year ago”. Now this is an extremely serious charge. But once again, the entire PNC executive body, stood mute. We had heard that justice was blind – but certainly not mute.

Yet (as we had described her) the ‘young PNC whippersnapper PR, Ramsay’ attested that Norton’s ‘allegations’ were “put to rest by Mr Corbin”. More of the Orwellian ‘1984’: “Lies are truth, War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Et tu, Malcolm?

Malcolm Parris is an old Buxtonian, and an exchairman of the PNC.

Parris sought to refute the PPP’s claims that they always had a deputy Speaker from the Opposition. He claimed that PPP’s “Martin Winston Zephyr, my fellow Buxtonian’ was deputy under Derek Jagan.

Sadly, he omitted to mention this unavoidable anomaly occurred when the PNC had boycotted parliament! Sin of omission? O tempora! O mores!