…or campaigning
Another week, another “outreach”! That’s the motto of the PNC-led coalition Government since the successful NCM in the National Assembly back on Dec 21, 2018. Ministers who’d never left their air-conditioned offices in Georgetown over the previous three and a half years are suddenly heading out to the “sticks”, to listen to the “needs of the people” straight from the yahoos’ mouth.
And not only to listen, but to dole out on-the-spot “solutions” to those needs! What couldn’t be done in the aforementioned three and a half years has suddenly been nailed in three and a half months!!
The residents of Namless (NOT “Nameless”!) on the EB Essequibo, and Walakabra on the Linden Highway could only use water they fetched from surrounding villages or from the nearby rivers – “portable water!” Suddenly they now have “potable” water delivered to their homes, thanks to GWI!!
The mother of all “outreaches” was when 19 Ministers descended like locusts on 28 Rupununi villages – even when they weren’t even “Ministers”, since Cabinet had resigned and they were meeting as a “Plenary” – whatever that was! In that exercise, the good (and amazed) villagers of places like Massara and Rupertee even heard they were going to get a new US$50 million airport at Lethem!! However, after seeing what US$150 million delivered at Timehri’s CJIA, maybe they weren’t in too much shock and awe!!
This week, led by PM Nagamootoo, at least 11 Ministers were whisked over to West Coast Demerara for their latest “outreach”. To their chagrin, they couldn’t “descend”, since WCD is just “over the river” — probably out of empathy for the residents not getting the new bridge across the Demerara River. However, Nagamootoo had their wailing sirens and outriders create such a massive traffic jam that he and his Ministers were able to experience the daily frustration of those bemused folks!
But hundreds of benighted residents of WCD, as in the Government’s earlier “outreach” to Berbice, were churlish enough to picket the unselfish band of Ministers who’d interrupted their Sabbath to minister unto their needs. Imagine, they had the temerity to suggest that the goodly Ministers were in fact campaigning for the elections coming up sooner or later, and were using Government’s funds to do so!!
It’s clear to your Eyewitness that some citizens have become much too cynical about this PNC Government and their AFC sidekicks!! In his estimation, they’d been forced to spend their first three and a half years in Georgetown due to the demands of governing: refurbishing their offices (in the case of Nagamootoo, to also refurbish the official PM’s Quarters, which had rats in its oven), and getting used to their new SUVs and outriders.
Such unselfishness!!
…to defend a terrorist
The state rag, Chronic, rushed to defend the PNC Government’s honour for honouring convicted international terrorist, ex-PNC MP Abdul Kadir. It insisted that the Government’s intent was to extend “sympathy, not honour”!! Have you ever heard about the logical fallacy of a “distinction without a difference”?? Well, that’s it!! How can you describe a man who was proven to have the intent to blow up one of the largest and busiest airports and kill thousands of innocent persons as “a great man, a stalwart, a bold and courageous man”, and say you’re not “honouring him”?? Do these people think Guyanese and Americans are fools??
What was also contradictory was that they used the words of TUC’s Lincoln Lewis to make that distinction without a difference, when in fact Lewis admitted Kadir was honoured. “The fact that Kadir was so HONOURED in the Assembly for the period which he served…puts no stain on Parliament…” Lewis thus makes a distinction within a distinction! Distinction squared?
Never mind that Kadir had committed treason for spying for the Iranians while he had been an MP!!
…while locked in struggle
AFC’s Nagamootoo and Ramjattan both participated in the WCD Outreach. But what was glaring to all and sundry – participants and protesters – was that they didn’t “bruk” voice with each other!!
Ambition should have thicker skin!!