…on PNC’s voting focus
The PNC – still using the fig leaf name “APNU” – had its last rally in Georgetown to fire up its supporters for Monday’s LGE. They beat the bushes with all the ingenuity they could muster (cheap Banks was the clincher for the usual Stabroek Market lumpentariat!) and managed to attract some four hundred bodies.
It’s clear that David Granger had been scheduled to address the faithful, but with him stuck in Cuba dealing with his (unrevealed) illness, the party made an interesting choice for its main speaker – Winston Jordan. This in itself is revealing. Why weren’t some of the other party leaders – including newly-elected Volda Lawrence picked? Word is, the infighting within the PNC for leadership in 2020 is reaching boiling point with Granger’s absence and none of the three heavyweights would agree to each other getting exposure.
The compromise? Winston Jordan, who, up to now, has been a lacklustre Finance Minister for the past three years after being a faceless flunkey in the Finance Ministry’s Budget Office!! They were playing it safe – ‘cause they knew they couldn’t risk having the Mayoress Patricia Green-Chase in the audience, get onto the stage and speak. While they didn’t tell her to “SHUT UP!”, their tactic was just as effective!! Even the faithful wouldn’t have been able to stand her and with all those beer bottles in their hands, who knows what might’ve happened!!
But it might just be they’ve created a monster with presidential ambitions of his own!! Jordan said not a single word about the Municipal Elections nor even mentioned even a single one of the PNC candidates – especially the aforementioned Mayoress! His entire MAIDEN political speech was on the 2020 General Elections and how he would spend the oil revenues and how they must join him to keep out the PPP!!
The man was virulent on the race issue. He accused the PPP of “buying off” the Disciplined Forces by giving them a month’s bonus for years – while not doing the same for nurses, civil servants and others in the public sector! He clearly thinks the Disciplined Forces personnel are more easily bought out than the others! But not to worry, he declaimed: comes 2020 and the oil money, “watch with us one more day, one more hour. We are for you, we are for you. We have not forgotten that it’s you who put us here!”
The reason why the Government could give them the promised “substantial salary increases” was because they were saddled with a “misery of a sugar industry to deal with” and payments to rice farmers!!
The PNC presidential leaders better look out! Air Jordan looks ready to fly!!
…on AFC’s demise
While the PNC was mining its stomping grounds in Georgetown, the AFC returned to Berbice – more specifically the fishing village of Whim where Moses Nagamootoo was born. As your Eyewitness had mentioned, Nagamootoo declared the race in that part of the country was “between the AFC and the PPP”!! Well, he had his “Mini rally” in Whim, while the PPP had its in the neighbouring village of Bloomfield.
And if these rallies are anything to go by, it just confirmed the “dead meat” status of the AFC – even with fellow Berbician Khemraj Ramjattan at his side! All you’ve got to do is take a gander at the coverage of the AFC “rally” and “march” in the Chronic – which Nagamootoo controls. The Chronic only mentioned “the crowd” without daring to reveal the number in the “crowd”!! The pics were closely cropped to hide the low turnout. But they couldn’t hide that even these were all AFC with their free caps and T-shirts!!
In Bloomfield, however, the PPP was blooming like poppies in the field!!
…on the President’s medical condition
The news blackout on the President’s medical condition is unconscionable in a democracy, especially in the face of him being unable to return to Guyana as promised to vote in the LGE.
This is causing too much speculation.