Working together …

…on the left?
The Roopnaraine saga’s acting like a Rorschach test to some in the political arena. For the PNC – the main player in APNU – it has revealed that while snakes may shed their skins (and names) the new one is in every respect, identical to the first. How could it be otherwise? The DNA blueprint for forming the new skin had always remained the same!!
The PNC has always hated the WPA’s guts. Don’t forget that Burnham called the WPA of Walter Rodney – not the PPP, the “worst possible alternative”. And it wasn’t just the fact that Rodney had undermined Burnham’s credentials with African radicals both here and in Africa – no it was also personal. Unlike Jagan, who always insisted on formal political labels for insulting Burnham – “racist”, “Menshevik”, “deviationist” etc – Rodney used street language to destroy the myth Burnham had cultivated.
Rodney called Burnham “Fat Boy” and the ordinary folks chuckled at the “false name”! For the middle class, Rodney dubbed the dictator “Man with the Midas Touch” – save that unlike the Greek King, everything Burnham touched, turned to “ka-ka”!! This jibe struck so close to home, it probably sealed Rodney’s fate. Burnham’s acolytes have never forgotten this.
So, while Rodney’s successors made common cause with the PNC to form APNU for the sake of their common constituency, the Burnhamites were biding their time and that’s what the Roopnaraine saga gave them the opportunity to do. And it’s now clear Roopnaraine’s been a most willing tool. Since he was the number two leader back in 1992 – when the WPA rejected Jagan’s unilateral offer to Thomas to be their PM – he knew perfectly what he was doing when he accepted Prezzie’s unilateral offer for him to be Education Minister.
So with him reneging on the WPA-insisted “resignation”, he’s demonstrated to all and sundry the WPA’s just a toothless poodle of the PNC – for show! But quite interestingly, Hydar Ally of the PPP has come out of the woodwork to suggest the WPA should now make common cause with the PPP – since they have always been close!!!
Really?? In which cave has Ally been living since after 1985? Apart from the Thomas’ sequestration, even before, wasn’t it the WPA that torpedoed the five-party PPP-led Patriotic Coalition for Democracy from fielding a common slate against the PNC? Hadn’t they set the stage for race-based charges against the post-1992 PPP regime by insisting Jagan would precipitate a rebellion by the Army and Police?
Could Hydar Ally point to one single event or circumstance since then to show what the WPA has in “common” with the PPP??
What tripe!
…against “the man”
Talking about Rodney, wasn’t it wonderful how Prezzie was “grounding with Rasta brothers”?? How things have changed!! When Rodney was at Mona in Jamaica, he was banned for his groundings – but here you have a President educating the brethren and sisteren about how to get reparations for the damage done by “the man” when they snatched I and I from Mother Africa.
Your Eyewitness, however, feels that while things have changed from the days when shearer was PM of Jamaica – we still have a long way to go. Our leaders still haven’t freed their minds from mental slavery.
Most of the leaders in Caricom aren’t even willing to talk the talk, much less walk the walk. If our local DJ’s – who haven’t been to Jamaica or enrolled in UG “Creole” programme – can speak “real Jamaican” why can’t our leaders?
Will the European nations ever take us seriously when we show up looking like cheap imitations of whatever they decide is “proper”??
When will they start wearing dreadlocks?
…on electricity theft
Nearly 1/3 of GPL’s electricity is stolen. They know who steals the most. But all they did was wring their hands. Now they’ve promised ACTION!
They’re unleashing a programme “to raise awareness about electricity theft”!!!