…and the PNC
Your Eyewitness would concede we all revise our history — especially at the personal level — to present a better face to the world. But if we want to maintain our credibility, we have to keep the revision within tolerable limits, don’t we? Like Trotman claiming he’s suddenly an expert in the petroleum industry!! Folks have to pick themselves off the floor – suffering from paroxysms of laughter when they hear that whopper!!
And it’s also the same with institutions — perhaps even more so — because of their higher profile. So when the Chronic reports with a front page banner headline that Pressie boasted at the occasion of the 60th anniversary of his party, “The PNC proud of record”, both Pressie and the Chronic widened their credibility gap to a chasm the size of the Kaieteur gorge!
And Pressie even chose to be specific, citing “the introduction of a proportional representation (PR) system for elections”!! Now, even every schoolchild and his illiterate uncle know PR was introduced by the British in a cynical move to oust the PPP from office. They’d done this in 1953 by sending troops into the then British Guiana, but the other PR — Public Relations — fallout made them choose a more surgical approach.
Never mind they’d tutored us for over a hundred years that the Constituency (First-past-the-post – FPTP) System was the best method of electing leaders. And (this was the clincher) it was the system they’d used for the said hundred years, and still do in jolly old Blighty!! But in the 1961 election, which the PPP won under FPTP, they saw that if the UF and PNC had joined forces under PR, they would’ve won. And the PNC is PROUD of carrying out the callous plans of the British, whom they’d castigated as “imperialists”??
Then there was the boast about “Guyana’s development as a testament of PNC’s leadership”. What development? Economic? By 1980, the McIntyre Report announced, we’d sunk to the bottom of the Caribbean barrel — just above Haiti! The same year, in his Budget speech, Finance Minister Carl Greenidge confessed that Guyana was officially “bankrupt”. Politically, elections were rigged routinely, and the PNC’s legitimacy was so low they couldn’t find a place at Third World Leadership meetings – especially after Walter Rodney’s assassination.
Socially, the country was as divided as ever — save for a growing number of African Guyanese who flocked to the banner of the WPA in disgust at the failed policies of the PNC. Your Eyewitness could go on, but what’s the point? Studies have shown the party faithful hear what they want to hear.
And the rest lack conviction.
…and racial profiling
Guyanese woke up and discovered a “Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGPAD) has been in our midst, and they’ve announced their findings. This group comes out of the UN-sponsored “International Decade for People of African Origin” initiative, but your Eyewitness does believe they’ve lost sight of their mission.
Now, these folks are supposed to be looking into matters that affect ONLY African Guyanese negatively, right? So how come they’re recommending prison reform. What’s going on here? Isn’t this racial profiling? Is it only African Guyanese who’re jailed?
Now, if they say there are more African Guyanese in jails here than members of other groups, why aren’t they examining the record of the US, where African Americans are 37% of the jail inmates even though they’re just 10% per cent of the population.
And how dare they compliment David Granger’s ‘Five Bs’ Initiative.
Don’t they know a PPP MP was censured for suggesting the programme was mainly for African Guyanese children?
…of imperial mandate
Pressie boasted about the PNC wrenching “independence” from Britain. So how come the latter’s High Commissioner, like the Governor of old, boasted he’s directing governmental policies — most recently selecting the Demerara “Ming Swing” Bridge contractor?
Didn’t you wonder why there was the extension for contractors’ pre-qualification? BAM!! BAM!!