Playing…

…the race card
When you’re a two-bit, wannabe, tin-pot, Third-World dictator and you’ve run out of options to defend your illegal hold on power, what do you do?? Well, if you’re David Granger trying doggedly to walk in the footsteps of your dictator-mentor Forbes Burnham, you play the race card!! If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, race is the last refuge of the ersatz dictator!!
Stung by the Ambassadors of the US, UK, and the EU observing that his government was in “breach” of the Constitution for not proclaiming elections by September 18, and unless he does so pronto, they might just stop helping, he lashed out at them last Sunday. He’s skipped Church to address some core supporters gathered under the banner of the “International Decade for People of African Descent”.
Said he: “Some of the authors of that crime against humanity have never apologised, have never paid reparations. They can pick up every comma and every semicolon, but they have never apologised for the crime they committed for four hundred years. Any of you know of whom I speak, you know who brought you here; never apologised but now they try to correct other people.”
So, let your Eyewitness get this straight. Just because some Europeans once enslaved Africans to work on our plantations, this means they have to be quiet about the PNC – which is supported predominantly by African Guyanese – when they are violating the Constitution? So it was OK for those same Europeans to chastise the PPP Government of Donald Ramotar – whose supporters are mostly Indian Guyanese – when he dared to use a prerogative of the Constitution to stave off a NCM? It had to’ve been, since Granger and his PNC cheered lustily when the then British Ambassador did the chastising!!
But what does he now say to the latest condemnation of Mr Granger’s constitutional indiscretions: “The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Patricia Scotland, urges the President of Guyana and all relevant stakeholders and institutions to restore constitutional rule in Guyana by immediately setting an early election date in consonance with its constitution, enabling elections to be held without further delay… In this regard, and in accordance with the ruling of the CCJ, a general election in Guyana is now constitutionally overdue. A general election should be held in accordance with the unambiguous constitutional imperative to do so.”
Baroness Scotland is originally from Dominica and has proudly identified with the Caribbean. For what it’s worth she also evidently shares a common racial ancestry with Granger. Is she also disqualified to chastise Granger’s constitutional trespass?
And for what it’s worth…the US fought its bloodiest war to abolish slavery, and sent none here. They get no credit?
…the fool
David Granger is really contemptuous of his supporters. He keeps regurgitating the patent falsehood about why he didn’t call elections by Sept 18. Said he: “This decision is not whimsical. I must be advised that the Elections Commission is in a state of readiness to conduct elections. It would be reckless of me to name a date for the holding of elections without ascertaining the Commission’s readiness to do so.”
Now the US, UK, EU, Commonwealth, Christian Churches, Hindu Mandirs, Muslim Mosques, and the Opposition have all condemned Granger’s outlaw behaviour…so his only redoubt has to be the PNC faithful! But they also have to know that in our parliamentary democracy, the party in power can call “snap elections”…meaning without any prior warning to anyone. All he has to do – according to Art 61 – is dissolve the National Assembly and set a date three months hence.
GECOM can THEN only balk (Art 162(2) and set a new date if they can show “hardship” or “danger”.