…hyphenated identities
As happens like clockwork around every election, someone or other will throw into the boiling pot of our politics that cleaves around ethnic identities. “Oh why can’t we all be just GUYANESE, why do we have to be hyphenated-Guyanese??” And of course, then sanctimoniously announce THEY’ve been able to do it and why can the rest of us follow in their hallowed footsteps??!! The assumption, of course, is that hyphenation is a bad and backward thing!!
Now right away we gotta point out that this hyphenated-Guyanese business isn’t just a “Guyanese thing”. Pick country, ANY country and you’ll find the hyphens abounding, obviously with some more than others. Guyana and most of Africa, plenty; Japan and Korea, less so. The question, then is, do human beings have this need to be hyphenated?? Is it something we choose to do?? Is it an innate drive? Or is it something imposed on us?
Rather than look at Guyana to understand this hyphenation business, why don’t we look at the US, which isn’t only the “land of the free and home of the brave”, but represents all we wish to be: rich and democratic!! And like us, they were formed by all sorts of people from scads of countries coming over to take over the land from what they called “Red Injuns”! Do they have hyphenated identities, even though they were launched over 200 years ago? You can bet your firstborn, that they do!! In fact they pretty much LAUNCHED the hyphenation movement to insist that SOME SPECIFIED Americans weren’t even fully human!!
Well. Some of you may say that look how the Eye-talian Americans and the Irish-Americans and British Americans don’t REALLY identify as such any longer. Now while on the surface there may be something to that, if you believe it, then I have a bridge across the Demerara River to sell you!! What you’ll notice if you scratch them deep enough that the REAL Americans are the descendants of those folks who came over from England and landed at Plymouth Rock! Every other group that came later had to strive to be as close to those REAL Americans as they could to be accepted.
And that, of course, brought up the Elephant in the room: how would the folks brought over from Africa and arrived waaaay before those Eye-talians and such-like become “as close” to the Englishers, when the colour of their skin made them “less human”?? What we see then is the hyphenation that made the African-Americans “different” was imposed to justify inequality. As Malcolm X said, “Plymouth Rock LANDED on them!”
And just like Guyana, once there are inequalities in treatment, the hyphens will remain!!
…the list quagmire
The method to the not-so-new GECOM Chair’s apparent madness is becoming clearer with each passing day. The particular piece of madness your Eyewitness has in mind right now is her decision on the unilaterally and secretly ordered H2H registration by her illegally appointed predecessor. OK, dear reader, he knows this matter’s been brought up ad nauseum. But when conjecture and speculation on the aim as rigging the elections, become reality, it gotta be placed on the record.
With the PPP absent from the H2H expedition, the data was always going to be fruit of a poisoned exercise, wasn’t it? Irretrievably tainted. But instead of dumping the 370,000 names collected, the Chair agreed to have them coded. Then agreed to have them “matched”. Then agreed to have them divided by registration districts. Then agreed to have them posted at the GECOM districts’ HQ’s.
So what’s the next step?? To use the lists as the “comparator” or standard to compare the data on the PLE.
Folks on that list don’t even have to produce birth certificates!!
…the APNU coalition
In the wake of the strains in the AFC/PNC coalition, Indigenous Peoples Minister, GAP’s Sydney Allicock cautioned against a breakup, “because the coalition represents the entire country.”
So why’s Granger talking with Schuman? Allicock also lost his mojo?