It wasn’t exactly a “May Day” call for the nation, but it was put out with the seeming urgency of one. Your Eyewitness is referring to the call by the newly-reborn AFC – in the person of the energized recalled leader – supported by others who’d been thought to’ve retired (hurt?) from the fray.
“Since it would be necessary to attract foreign investment to Guyana to go forward, we should identify those areas that are critical to our development and come to a political consensus between all the parties and leading civil society groups on a 10 to 15 years development plan.”
Now, this sounds reasonable on its face, innit? All of the political parties agree on a common plan for our development; so, it doesn’t matter who wins, since they’ll be following the same blueprint!! As was explained, “The reason for that is we know that every time we change government here, we change everything, and it takes two to three years for the people that you had moved to be put back in…and the disruption does such damage to the economy.”
There was an example, the PPP Norwegian-backed AFHEP plan that was torpedoed by his party while in Opposition, and never resuscitated when they got into power!! It was replaced by that electricity-generating Wind Farm by the fella who built the AFC’s Headquarters – which seems to be just a windmill to tilt at!! Politics is a bitch, innit?
But in the same speech, the AFC leader identified another reason for the noble call for our politicians to rally behind the “One for all and all for one!” His exhortation might’ve fallen on barren soil. Declared he: “The AFC is a political party competing nationally in every square inch of this country, in every village, in every city, in every municipality.”
Now, if the fella was thinking about all the other parties coming together on this developmental plan, how exactly would they be “competing nationally” with elections just a year away?? Wouldn’t folks be placing their votes for those parties whom they think have the best plan for improving their lives?
Now, in all honesty, the fellow appeared to be firing a 2X4 lash at one appointed competing leader, who’s advised that courting votes from other communities is a waste of time. “We don’t approach it on the basis of splitting votes, because we don’t recognise that people belong ethnically to anybody”!!! Your Eyewitness thinks that the call for unity on developmental plans would also go nowhere, based on the experience of the same new AFC leader’s foray in leading the Committee of Constitutional Reform in 2015, whose recommendations were deep-sixed by his own party!!
It matters from which side ideas come!!
…for sanity
Your Eyewitness’s attention was caught by the following quote: “One of the biggest mistakes we all made was to believe that genocide is abnormal, exceptional, outside the range of human behaviour and acceptability. The contrary is true, and has always been true, once we know and accept that we can try to organise and act to counter it.”
Now, when you witness what’s going on in Gaza – with the Israeli Jews having already killed over 40,000 Palestinians since last October — how could you disagree??
The Jews have been made into the emblematic face of the victims of genocide in modern times – after the Nazi killed 6 million of them during WWII. But during that same war, hadn’t Churchill and England killed 10 million Bengalis supposedly in a “famine” – while food was shipped out to England?? And what about the 800,000 Tutsis hacked to death by Hutus in 1994?? Or the 1 million Iraqis bombed into oblivion to seize nonexistent Weapons of Mass Destruction?? Where’s next?
…for acknowledgement
Dave Martins, the amiable country boy who represented the best of what our people can be in spirit, has departed. But Mad Maduro and Venezuelan politics will ensure his “Not a blade of grass”, which remains our anthem forever. RIP.
