Power plays

The “AFC gaze”
Post-modernists speak of various ‘gazes’. They mean that certain groups with power are able to shape the views of various ‘others’, based on their own (obviously subjective) perspective. So we have the ‘imperial gaze’ of the British defining us as ‘ugly natives’ who are incapable of accomplishing anything. One of the AFC main advisors (and close friend of its leader Ramjattan) Freddie Kissoon is one of those ‘natives’ who’s accepted that description of himself.
He projects that onto other Guyanese who, he accuses of never measuring up to the ‘white man’. Only Sunday he kept on about some NIS bureaucratic regulation that once again “proved” Guyanese inferiority. As if the U. S. Social Security doesn’t have bureaucratic rigmaroles. Another sick consequence of the ‘imperial gaze’ is Kissoon’s obsession with ‘colour’. Obviously, Kissoon missed the “Black is Beautiful” movement in the sixties. But there’s a ‘gaze’ that works at an even deeper level and is even more insidious and widespread – the ‘gaze’ of gender. Specifically, the ‘male gaze’ that has been in play for thousands of years to define women as inferior on all counts.
And that women must accept that definition and spend their lives trying to measure up for the ‘man’s world’. Thankfully, from the 1960s, not only ‘people of colour’ and ‘colonial peoples’ rebelled against the ‘imperial gaze’, but also women.
The feminist movement exposed the pervasive means which kept women in subjugation. First, there was the view that women couldn’t do certain jobs – and if there were no men around, then men would decide which women could get the job. We saw this ‘male gaze’ operating in the AFC from the very beginning.
Even though their founding members were from three separate political parties, Sheila Holder – the female – never qualified for the ‘rotational leadership’. Did goat bite her? No. It was just the “AFC gaze”. The gaze was exposed over the Gomattie Singh issue – when the grassroots- oriented woman was bypassed for the more ‘suave’ Chantelle Smith. This decision was made by the male Raphael Trotman who ‘explained’ condescendingly that Smith was his ‘friend’. So this latest blow-up over AFC’s Charrandass Persaud deriding a female doctor as ‘fat’ is not a flash in the pan. The sexist gaze is deeply imbedded in the psyche of the AFC leaders. Women should starve themselves into anorexic twigs. AFC wanker – perverts!
Goat bite SC?
This ‘get Rohee’ obsession is making even normally balanced individuals get off keel. No… we don’t mean Eusi Kwayana and his missiles from California. That old man – played eight – was never known for his ‘balance’. We’re referring to Brynmor TI Pollard, SC, who just fired off a querulous letter to the Stabber News, wherein he questions the Linden CoI “exoneration” of Minister Rohee.
He said he’d hoped the CoI “would pronounce collectively or individually on the issue of the responsibility or otherwise of the minister, as the minister of government responsible for the police”. Well, jeez, wasn’t the ‘exoneration’ a ‘pronouncement’? The SC also noted the AG’s mention of Guyana’s constitutional practice of ‘collective ministerial responsibility’ and claims “it does not affect the right of the minister to resign his or her appointment or the right of the president to relieve an individual minister of his or her portfolio”. Well, we should certainly hope so! Guyana’s Constitution forbids ‘involuntary servitude’! Thus Minister Rohee could have resigned – for whatever or no reason – IF he so desired. Evidently, he doesn’t so desire. And the opposition better get used to that.
WICB calumny
The territorial boards that make up the WICB (excepting Guyana’s) should hang their heads in shame in light of their rejection of Clive Lloyd’s candidacy for the head of the WICB. Permanently languishing in the doldrums.