Smelling blood

Hounding Rohee

Clement Rohee has been a thorn in the side of the opposition from day one in the post-1992 PPP administration. As far back as Hoyte, they started to go after him-viciously and persistently. Hoyte chose the ad hominem route. In a series of cheap shots, he questioned the ‘educational’ qualifications of Rohee. For a man who served donkey years under Burnham, who was most proud of his ‘education’, Hoyte should have been the last man to go down this road.
Rohee was educated in the street of hard knocks and at the feet of Cheddi Jagan. What the opposition cannot stand was he never took their attacks lying down: he gave as much as he got-and then some. He wasn’t supposed to do that-he should have become struck dumb with ‘shame’-like Nagamootoo, who felt compelled in his dotage to go to law school to show he was ‘educated’.
Anyhow, the opposition have sensed that in addition to going after the government in general over the Linden protests shootings Rohee might also be taken out. Sase ‘Thunderbolt’ Singh and his fellow foreign sidekick Asquith Rose (henceforth S& R) are the latest to bay for his blood. And why, pray tell? Because Rohee is the home affairs minister and he’s responsible! For what? Well, they’re calling for a commission of inquiry to find out. But what the heck? They’ve already set themselves up as judge and jury to lynch Rohee.
This is the opposition’s idea of the ‘rule of law’! If you’re PPP then you’re guilty until you’re proven innocent. They’ve also decided that the three persons killed are ‘martyrs’-never mind that the inquiry has not pronounced whether the police were justified in their response. But interestingly S& R excised their former blue-eyed leader Ramjattan from their affections and called for ‘Nagamootoo and Nigel Hughes’ to lead their new ‘struggle’. This is real cold! But then in these matters (of trying to satisfy one’s lust for power) the secret is that monkey has to know what limb monkey has to jump on! But if they have any sense, they’d lay off Rohee. He’s a street fighter.

A new front
The GPSU has just announced they’re not going to go along with the government’s annual five per cent salary increases.
Patrick Yard, the leader-for-life of the GPSU, declared that this year, they’ll be demanding 25 per cent increases!! You can see the direction the wind is blowing from the opposition camp.
The GPSU obviously believes that the government’s back is against the wall-beleaguered as it is with the Linden protests; the corruption charges and the ‘racist’ tag that the opposition is trying to pin on them in the wake of the Chronicle editorial. The GPSU has never been shy to declare where its political heart lay: firmly and irrevocably in the opposition camp. Over the past few years, Jagdeo had checkmated the union by his bold actions in seizing the initiative.
Patrick Yarde wants to test President Ramotar and believes that the latter’s administration might not want to fight on another front. The government might just roll over and play dead in the face of the GPSU’s protests in Georgetown. But the call for higher wages is just the occasion for escalating the ongoing war; the cause is to remove the government from office. And to ensure that the protests spread from Linden to Georgetown. So what if it further splits the country?