…or severed?
Oh well! Your Eyewitness predicted it would happen, didn’t he? The Government announced that the oil sector, now the largest chunk of our “Natural Resources – and growing uncontrollably, like Topsy! – won’t be under “Nassau” Trotman’s portfolio. But when this newspaper announced the AFC/PNC insider was “stripped” of authority over oil, the MoP got their drawers all into a knot and demanded a retraction!!
Now your humble Eyewitness is always ready to learn from anyone, no matter how idiotic they may sound initially. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings and all that! So he immediately rushed to his trusty dictionary (well nowadays, he just hits the search key on Google!!) and there was the accepted meaning of “Strip”: deprive someone of (rank, power, or property) – “the lieutenant was stripped of his rank”; synonyms: “take away from someone, dispossess someone of, deprive someone of, confiscate, divest someone of, relieve someone of.”
So wasn’t Nassau “deprived” of the power to deal with matters concerning oil? Just like that time he was “deprived” from the leadership of the AFC and immediately announced he was retiring from politics because he’d suddenly developed an (undefined) life-threatening illness? Of course he underwent a miraculous cure when PNC-leader David Granger offered him the Speakership over AFC’s nominee Moses Nagamootoo. But that is neither here nor there! Except one would want to know if the miracle occurred before or after “Nassau”!!
So is it a semantic objection to the verb “strip”?? Would “deprive”, “denude”, “dispossess”, “divest”, “decorticate”, “hive off” etc, be more acceptable? But we know what’s going on here, don’t we? The word “strip” suggests the powers over oil were taken away against Nassau’s will – as in “wrest”. But the line the PNC want’s to push is Trotman himself came up with the idea to “slough off” (?) what’s now the most critical power in Guyana!! So he’s not quite the ogre the big, bad media’s making him out to be!! Look how he’s sacrificing for the greater good! Ooooo!
But that’s the rub, isn’t it? Why would Nassau want to jettison (?) his oil authority if he were doing such a fantastic job?? After all he did DOUBLE the royalties and locked down that MASSIVE bonus, didn’t he?? But dear reader, your Eyewitness did say it was simply a feint to remove Nassau from the firing line and it’s all a “cock”, didn’t he? And he advised we look at what’ll unfold.
Well, it’s even worse than your (jaded) Eyewitness feared. One fella in the know says the PNC leader will have his nephew run the oil agency!!
A new Baby Jesus and it ain’t even Christmas!!
…to the buff
How’d you know the measure of a man? Not by what he declaims from a stage…but by what he does in unguarded moments. Or when he loses his cool. Take the erstwhile Public Security Minister and Vice President of our fair Republic – Khemraj Ramjattan. At the function to honour the departing COP whom he’d just sandbagged by revealing the man has asked himself for a gun-dealer’s licence – he was asked about the details. Ramjattan finally ejaculated, “Haul yuh ass!!” That evidently shocked the assembled media corps who’ve now demanded an apology.
There is a God!! When this same Minister routinely answered reporters from this newspaper by the same, low-life, low-down expression, no one gave a hoot. Well now they’re getting a taste of the fetid medicine – and some more! Seems some stronger “words of excrement” were hurled earlier at a senior reporter, and he’s all miffed!
Your Eyewitness looks at these things contextually. Firstly, Ramjattan was under strain after his rejection by his “fellow” Berbicians.
Then, he’s just a bottom feeder!!
…of I and I
Some unkind and ignorant folks are snickering at (now) former CoP Seelall writing to himself for that gun and gun dealer’s licence.
Don’t they realise I-man always refer to himself as “I and I”??