Well, we made it!!! Here, we are in 2024 – a new year!! So, do we have a chance for a new beginning?? Hardly!! While you and I can make these arbitrary chronological breaks, unfortunately old man Time keeps flowing on like an unbroken river – carrying along with it everything that came before. Including contradictions, gripes, spites, and rancour – but also missed opportunities!! So will the Government and Opposition kiss and make up now that everyone’s willing to shake hands?? Let’s see!! They say the most intractable conflicts are between those who are actually close to each other. The wonks call it the “narcissism of small differences”!!
And who can really be closer than the PNC and PPP –- since the former came out of the bosom of the latter. Yep…the young’uns might be surprised that the PNC’s a child of the PPP – not exactly a love child, but its child nevertheless!! So with the two of them a pi55ing contest always breaks out when they get together!! It used to be “who was the better Marxist” back in the day of Cheddi and Forbes – with fierce arguments as to who were the “Bolsheviks” and who were the “Mensheviks”!! And now that today no one even knows who the heck THEY were, the argument’s about who’s doing more for “the people” and all that!!
The trick, of course, is to figure out who’re “the people” for each of them – even as they insist it’s ALL of the people – while they’re each identified with different ethnic blocs!! The PPP seem hell bent to bring back the glory days of the 1950s when “all ah we wuz waan” and have been assiduously courting those the PNC consider “their” constituency!! This has created a new bone of contention roiling their always-fraught relationship. One PNC supporter accused the PPP of being the new “slave catchers”!!
But from what your Eyewitness is observing, the PPP’s been using the oil bonanza to make a full-court press by handing out house-lots, business opportunities, cash grants, scholarships, etc. which seem to be breaking the old barriers. Observing thousands of ex-PNCites sporting the PPP trademark red shirt, the PNC claimed these were the insignia of slavery!! But this New Year brings us closer to the next elections – now ONE YEAR AWAY!! Imagine that!! How time flies when you’re having a good time, right??
So what else might be on the cards this year?? Will we see Mad Maduro cancelling his “annexation” of our Essequibo?? Just don’t hold your breath, OK? Maduro’s facing elections THIS year – and he knows his goose is cooked if he goes along.
So what better way to cancel those elections if there’s a “crisis” with Guyana!?!
…speech challenge
Freedom of speech is a hallmark of the new democratic order ushered in after the American Revolution when they kicked out the Brits!! The guarantee of this freedom became the VERY FIRST AMENDMENT TO THEIR CONSTITUTION!! So to question free speech is like questioning motherhood, to the Yanks!! Yet with all their worship of untrammelled speech, they have a caution to its limits: “You can’t yell FIRE!! in a crowded theatre!!”
You get it, don’t you?? If you’re so irresponsible with your words to cause others to be harmed, then you lose your right!! They have another expression attributed to CJ Oliver Wendell Holmes that makes this clear: “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.” And right now we in Guyana are debating these limits with speech over social media platforms. The PNC coalition government had recognised the dangers of inciting racial hostility in our divided country – and passed a Cyber Crime Act to deal with it.
Let the law take its course!!
…horror
And the Israeli war in Gaza against Hamas continues unabated. The UN says more than 85 per cent of Gaza’s 2.4 million Palestinians have fled their homes and are living in the open – some under tents. Starvation is imminent.
