Your Eyewitness has few beliefs that he wouldn’t change – and one of them is that things always gonna change!!! When he was a young’un, he was quite impressed with some old Greek guy who said, “You can’t put your foot into the SAME river twice”!! Get it?? The river’s always flowing and therefore is always changing. In Guyana, however, he had to sadly conclude that somebody must’ve blocked our political river ‘cause its ethnic voting waters have remained practically unchanged since the 1950s!! The politicians have been sticking their noses in the same river all that time!!
Your Eyewitness seriously don’t think this was caused totally by the “politicians”, who we all like to cuss out for the fallout – including periodic episodes of violence. While they may pollute the political waters with their rhetoric and provocations, they couldn’t be effective if the people (the water of the political river) weren’t predisposed to ethnic manipulation. But the innocent among us – not your hard-nosed realist Eyewitness!! – have always been hoping “things gonna change”. And the lions will lie down with the lambs – and not feast on them!!
Well, it looks like the waters are a-changing”!! A just-released LAPOP poll – compiled from data gathered last year – claimed that 65 per cent of Guyanese said they prefer material guarantees — meaning mo’ money and stuff – rather than the integrity of elections!! And the percentage is greater among the poor, young and less educated!! What we’re told then is that probably up to THREE-QUARTERS of the latter cohorts couldn’t give a hoot about who’s elected to govern them – once their bread is buttered!!
So, at long last, there’s a sign that a majority of voters won’t cleave to ethnicity when they go out to put their Xs opposite the symbol of the two major parties in 2025!! That’s right – don’t worry about all the fig leaves the PNC’s gonna use, they can’t ever cover up their private (identity)!! It’ll still be PPP and PNC duking it out to run Guyana!! Now one of the main reasons for the EVIDENT change of heart has to be the massive sums of money that has – and will continue – to pour into our national coffers. The young especially want a piece of that action, so they too can live the high-life like those influencers who inhabit their smartphones – now permanently attached to their hands!!
Now, Dear Readers, this gives a TREMENDOUS advantage to the incumbent PPP who have their hands to the key of the treasury and can control – and direct – the flow of the funds!! Think Mocha-Arcadia and President Ali!!
Now let’s see what the PNC’s gonna say – or do about that!! Ouch!!
…on the British Monarchy?
Your Eyewitness is plain gobsmacked (yeah…it’s a word!!) by the fealty (there’s no other word for it!!) to the Crown!! Even as they complain about not being able to afford the food in the supermarkets they’re willing to support Charles getting that annual $99 Million STIPEND – not salary – on top of the Royal Privy (and that’s not a loo!). Poor Charles!! But what is more amazing is coming to the fore of what we were assured were “British Characteristics”, like “stiff upper-lip” and “queuing” at the drop of a hat.
When Westminster Hall opened its doors at 5 pm on Tuesday, the queue of visitors stretched for almost three miles along the River Thames!! Imagine that – three miles and no one trying to “pope” the line!! As one fella tweeted: “Tell me this isn’t the greatest bit of British performance art that has ever happened. We are a deeply, deeply mad people with an absolutely unshakeable need to join a queue!”
Would that madness have washed off on us!!
…and washing away
Well…Guyana’s hit the world charts again. First, there was Jonestown’s 918 suicides; then oil and now we’re Number 8 on the list of countries’ population most likely to be flooded out because of climate change!!
