Well, for your Eyewitness and you, dear readers, 75 is a big number to reach in the birthday lottery.
Not surprising, seeing that even though we’ve recently improved, our average lifespan’s still just a tad above 70 – with females being at least three years above that. Meaning we, of the male species, on the average, croak around 67 – since we clearly can’t deal with the pressures like our better halves can!! But for political parties to reach 75, as the PPP did on Jan 1st, is quite extraordinary in a country that emerged out of fire, so to speak.
When the PPP was born in 1950, there was extraordinary excitement by the young lions who were gonna beard the British Lion, which they figured had gotten old and decrepit after fighting two “great” wars. Their beacon was India – the “jewel in the (British) crown” – which had been given independence in 1947. But those young lions, led by Jagan, Burnham and company, should’ve been alerted to the machinations of the Old Lion – which had split India into two – to ensure they’d be at each other’s throats to deflect and exhaust their energies.
They were caught up in the euphoria of massively winning the 1953 elections merely three years after their launch, and first figuratively, then literally, lost their heads and were ejected after 133 days by the arch-imperialist Churchill!! The PPP was split into two factions – under Jagan and Burnham – and, like with India and Pakistan, so was Guyana. In India, the partition was implicit, as it was here after Burnham named his faction the People’s National Congress (PNC) and connived explicitly with the Imperialist successor – the USA.
And so it was that the PNC was handed the state to rule, even as the nation was divided down the middle into hostile camps!! We shouldn’t have to remind Guyanese that the PNC rigged elections for TWENTY-EIGHT years – with the Brits and Yanks winking on the sidelines! – to keep the PPP out.
The question must be asked: How does a party stay alive when it has no access to the largess that control of the state can deliver?? And the answer boils down to one man – Cheddi Jagan!! Even though in the wilderness, Cheddi – as he insisted on being called by one and all – kept the PPP viable as he crisscrossed the country indefatigably forming “fronts” in each sector to mobilize his base.
Even though he was a Marxist, who dubbed ethnicity “false consciousness”, he accepted his ethnic Indian base, that identified with his origins rather than his ideology.
The PPP has evolved, with Jagan’s succors recently jettisoning the ideology and openly accepting the need to court ethnic groups outside their base.
Another 75 with oil??
…our success
One of the signs of our oil-fuelled success is that we’re fast developing into a hot new job destination. During the last year, job fairs were held in NY and TT – at least your Eyewitness knows about these – and the responses, especially in TT, widely were enthusiastic. We’re not the world’s second fastest growing economy for nothing!! With our minuscule population, however, we shouldn’t be surprised there aren’t enough bodies to fill all the vacancies opening up in EVERY field.
But your Eyewitness thinks we just can’t have a free-for -all and allow the entire world to beat a path to our door. Every other country has “emigration policies” that are tailored to fit their circumstances. Like, for example, the Yanks, with their H-1B visa program – which allows workers qualified in certain technical fields, like engineering etc, to have priority acceptance ahead of others.
Your Eyewitness knows, for instance, that we need nurses, and are recruiting from Cuba. We MUST, however, ensure they can communicate in English!!
…violence
The Yanks just had another mass killing – and are agonizing whether it’s a “terrorist” killing. Well, this time, even though it’s been mentioned prominently that the killer is a Muslim with an ISIS flag, he’s also an American-born veteran. Domestic terrorist?
