…“Granger, Ganja and Goadie”
It’s rather pathetic how the putative Prime Minister of Guyana, Moses Nagamootoo, has embraced his relegation to being the mouthpiece of David Granger’s PNC government. A few weeks ago, in Granger’s “Guyana Review” — now published as an insert in the Stabber News — there was such a cloyingly sycophantic puff piece on Granger that health centres across the country were inundated by readers who couldn’t stop gagging!!
Unfortunately, just when the medical staff might be taking a well-earned break, they’ll be getting another tsunami of “vomiters” who read Nagamootoo’s piece in his Chronic column on Granger’s address to Parliament!! But you’ve got to hand it to the man who’d been promised a testosteroned Prime Ministership and ended up with the “larwah” of a weekly column: he takes that column very, very seriously!!
This week, he wrote that on seeing 3 groups outside Parliament, he “thought immediately that this week’s column should be titled: ‘Granger, Ganja and Paisa’!! The man is always thinking about his job!! Sadly, it’s a job that rests on the carcasses of the two outside columnists – David Hinds and Lincoln Lewis – whom he knifed in the back. He’s now showing them what kind of columns the PNC boss-man demands: hagiographic and propagandistic!!
Nagamootoo used an extended cricketing analogy in his column, which he captioned, “Light roller on 20/20 pitch”!! Having never played T-20 cricket, he obviously doesn’t know that on such a pitch, the bowler – Granger in this case – would be consistently clobbered for sixes!! He waxed eloquently about the “slow spin” used by Granger, missing his Freudian slip with the word “spin” when used in communication!! He wrote, “I realised that his was no ordinary address: he was cataloguing achievements just three years after taking office”. Granger was giving his spin on how he’d delivered the good life after three years!
And what were these “achievements”?? Let’s go to the horse’s mouth: “…building a first-class education system, with emphasis on providing access to education, attendance and achievement. The first round of applause greeted the announcement that the Public Education Transport Service has distributed 1,254 bicycles, 28 buses and nine boats to help get our children to school, “without expending a dollar from the Government coffers.”
Imagine that!! Nagamootoo praising the PNC-government for “building a first-class education state” with bicycle donations from private citizens! While pissing off teachers – who’re responsible for delivering that education – by refusing to give them a living wage!! The impasse with teachers, brought on by the PNC’s unilateralism, went unmentioned and unreported by Nagamootoo!!
One may understand “a mouth muzzled by the hand that feeds it”.
But how does Nagamootoo explain his mouth spewing crap? Goadie?
…(stillborn) constitutional change
Once again, there are drumbeats – faint, but growing in intensity – for “constitutional change”. Your Eyewitness asks, ‘What’s the point?” Two recent events illustrate his scepticism. First, relating to the matter of stipulating constitutionally the need for the PNC and PPP to work together in some sort of collaborative mechanism.
But just read David Hinds’s column for this week. The caption alone says it all – “The APNU+AFC Coalition has collapsed: It has become a PNC government”. Of course, your Eyewitness has been saying this all along; but Hinds is a self-confessed “supporter” of the Government, and an executive member of one of its coalition partners, the WPA! This is a view from “inside”. He details how the AFC – even with the Cummingsburg Accord — had been neutered!
But some may retort that the Accord isn’t a “Constitutional imperative”. Well, what about Art 162 (2)? Wasn’t that a constitutional imperative to foster “consensus” between the parties??
Fact is, until the PNC’s weaned off sucking (unilateralism) eggs, we’re spinning wheels!
…the Berbice Bridge
With all the hullabaloo over the announced toll increases by the BBCI, the Government still refuses to act. Its primary duty is to other shareholders – especially NIS and commuters.
It should buy out other shareholders and ensure NIS’s long-term cash flow.