…the meeting
Your Eyewitness wondered what would’ve happened if Pressie had reached across the table in St Vincent and handed Mad Maduro a slap across the chops, to make the shifty-eyed Venezuelan dictator look him in the eye!! That pic with Mad Maduro shiftily looking away as he shook Pressie’s hand was very telling – of a man who’s been maligning his opposite for no reason other than clinging on to power!! The averting of those eyes was a reflexive gesture, coming from deep within a psyche that knows he’s a fake and a bluffer!!
Mad Maduro came up against a young man who’d experienced the hollowness of Maduro’s Chavismo utopianism – which can only end in the destruction of the people whose leaders refuse to face reality. Hadn’t half of Guyana not fled the detritus of Burnham’s identical “experiment” in Guyana, when Pressie was a child?? Pressie knows that, just as Burnham’s rule might’ve started from a genuine desire to help “his people”, it had to end as a horror story worse than “Night of the Living Dead”! But leaders like Mad Maduro and Burnham are so certain of the “path” they had discovered or inherited to “mould” the nation that, in the end, they had to assume dictatorial powers to “do good”!! Too bad if people had to die; they were just collateral damage!!
But your Eyewitness was quite surprised to learn Pressie had invited the Opposition to the St Vincent meet – and according to LOO Norton, they declined!! Can you believe this?? So, what was all this talk about unity against Venezuela about?? Just talk?? Mad Maduro has declared war against Guyana, and the trip to St Vincent was one skirmish in that war. And the Opposition refused to fight because the agenda wasn’t specific enough”?? C’mon now…what kinda excuse is this?? If Norton represents the institutional memory of the PNC going back to the Geneva Agreement, at least shouldn’t he have accepted that this woulda been a plus for the GUYANESE side?? He always boasts about his Foreign Affairs cred…wouldn’t he have been able to match even one of the three briefing books Mad Maduro plunked down on the table??
Anyhow, your Eyewitness is disappointed that, after they declined to be at the meet, the Opposition – in the person of their Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, are now sniping from the shadows that the GUYANESE team allowed a reference to “territory in dispute” in the final communique!! Your Eyewitness also thinks this is a mistake – but that’s exactly why the Opposition shoulda taken up Pressie’s invitation. Aren’t two heads better than one??
Well, now that Mad Maduro’s promised he won’t use force to consummate his de facto annexation of our Essequibo – your Eyewitness ain’t holding his breath!!
…a new Great Game
The Great Game was a rivalry between the 19th century British and Russian Empires over influence in Central Asia. The two colonial empires used military interventions and diplomatic negotiations to acquire and redefine territories in that area until matters settled down – such as they did – by WWI. Well, behind Mad Maduro’s madness to be claiming parts of Colombia, Guyana, and who knows? — Trinidad next? – might be another Great Game playing out.
Maduro’s mentor Chavez used the US’ Monroe Doctrine, which asserted their primacy over the Western Hemisphere vis-a- vis the old colonial powers – ironically, first against Imperial Britain!! – to make common cause with Putin in Russia. Chavez avoided Putin’s oligarchical capitalist economic structures to assert “socialist” commonality against the Great Satan in the North!! Putin’s shipped billions and billions of dollars’ worth of sophisticated military hardware into Venezuela – to deter the US from excising his dictatorial excesses.
But now Mad Maduro’s using them to annex our Essequibo!! Makes sense to saddle up with the Yanks, no??
…the last blackout?
Now it’s been made very clear (irony intended!) that we need a whole lotta redundancy in electrical generation to banish blackouts, we hope the naysayers will get behind the Wales Gas-to-Shore project! The new 28.9Megawatt generation ain’t enough!!
