…weird political logic
If there’s any doubt about it, the ferocious disputations among our people following our March elections should confirm the old saw that “people hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see”. Even though all sorts of contrary information may be thrown at them, these are all evidently filtered out by their mental sieves. “Confirmation bias” it’s called. Alluding to the infamous “brainwashing” that produced the Jonestown tragedy, other folks nowadays talk about the deluded having drunk “cool aid”!
But it’s not as simple as that, is it? The thing is, we’re all affected by the phenomenon to a lesser or greater degree. So we gotta be constantly on guard about the “truth” of what’s going on around us. So how do we not drink the “cool aid”? Well, we can try the rules of logic that have been around ever since Aristotle applied some grey matter to the same question thousands of years ago. So let’s apply logic to think about our elections, which supporters of the PNC deny there’s even been any attempt to rig it.
We first have to ask whether they concede that the voting on March 2 was conducted above board. Well, the entire PNC leadership, including Granger, certainly thought so at the end of the day! As did all the observers from across the world. What this means is that the PNC agreed that all the ballots that were cast and in the ballot boxes were kosher. Now the dispute arose after Mingo changed the manner in which he tallied the SOPs that summarised the ballots in the boxes. He came up with different totals than those of the other political parties, including the PPP! And while the PNC refused to make their SOPs available – they yet accepted Mingo’s numbers, which showed they won!!
The other parties agreed to Granger’s requested Caricom observed recount, which showed numbers that matched theirs and NOT Mingo’s. Meaning that Mingo HAD to’ve fudged the count!! Rigging attempt!! Now you’d think that would settle the dispute, wouldn’t you? But the PNC camp followers heard only what they wanted to hear. Which was a new PNC story. To wit, that unlike what they’d accepted on March 2nd, they now claimed that “massive anomalies” had occurred through dead and migrated people voting!!
Voila! No rigging attempts!! The Mingo numbers? Never mind…just focus on the “anomalies”, which they insisted were inherent in the system and which that nasty PPP have always exploited! So how come the PPP lost in 2015 under the same system? Never mind!! Just focus on the anomalies!!
And what about all those observers’ observations? Never mind…they just hate “black people”!!
…cityscape
President Ali’s certainly not giving the PNC any chance to regroup with his blitzkrieg of game-changing initiatives since August 2. If it’s a new day, it’s a new PPP initiative! Poor Sanctimonious Gangster! Ali’s latest bombshell was announcing a planned “secondary city”, somewhere up the soon-to-be-completed Lethem-Georgetown Highway – with links to the projected Deep-Water Harbour off the Berbice River.
With all the talk of rising seas in the wake of global warming – that’s certainly not going to abate with the refusal of the developed countries to adhere to the stipulations of COP-25 – we can’t put all our urban eggs in the under-the-sea-level Georgetown. So the choice of our “Hilly Sand and Clay belt” is more than hedging our bets: it’s the beginning of the realisation of our continental destiny!
Why spend all that money on servicing the hydraulics of Georgetown? Those efforts are like that of the little boy with his finger in the dyke!
Go south young Guyana!
…moustache
Not having seen the fella in a while, your Eyewitness was jarred by Ramjattan’s visage on the front page of one of the dailies.
What’s the name of that sliver of hair on his “philtrum”? Certainly NOT “moustache”!
Mugabe-tache ?
