In October 2020, smarting after their loss – even after they tried a “Burnham thing” – the PNC commemorated the 63rd anniversary of their party. Meaning it was formed in 1957, when Burnham’s PPP-B lost the general elections to Jagan’s “PPP-J”. So, imagine your Eyewitness’s surprise when he noticed the PNC celebrating the 70th anniversary of the event last week. The five years since had been transmuted into 7 years?? Where did those two years come from?? Was it once again a case of applying the new math that was rejected by the CCJ? Or was it a case of time being relative, according to Einstein, and expands if you’re moving very, very, very slowly?? And God knows, the PNC has been almost comatose since 2020!!
Anyhow, it was soon explained that in the decades since 1957, everyone – including Burnham – had got it wrong!!
When he took his defeated PPP-faction and hitched up with the Coloured/Mixed UDP party, along with Sydney King, and launched the Peoples National Congress, it wasn’t REALLY the REAL launch!! That blessed event occurred – according to the present lot leading the party – when Burnham made his “leader or nothing” demand in 1955!! They divined – by the oblations they’ve been decanting copiously at Seven Ponds? – that Burnham had formed his party in his mind!! Could it be they’ve unearthed declassified documents that he’d already been “approached” by the Brits and he was now their “instrument”??
Anyhow, the PNC and their acolytes have segued smartly from commemorating that new 1955 launching date into celebrating the man’s birthday. That, at least, hasn’t become a moveable feast!! Burnham would’ve been 102 on Thursday Feb 20!!
Imagine that!! When he first saw the light in Kitty, he was a country boy, since Kitty was then a village and seen as the sticks!! His father was the headmaster of the local primary school, so he grew up in the genteel poverty of the rural middle class.
He was a bright kid, and first attended Central High School, then Queen’s, where he performed exceptionally well at jumping through the hoops the colonial state had established to winnow the chaff from the wheat. He never really was able to slough off the affectations of superiority augmented by Queen’s and these were further reinforced when he won a Guyana Scholarship that sent him to England in 1946 to study Law.
He returned so qualified, but now affected a Churchillian British accent after a mere four years spent there – with all the studied pauses and put downs of the arch-Imperialist – for the rest of his life!!
Your Eyewitness is surprised that, for all the adulation, none of his followers have affected his accent!! Isn’t imitation the best form of flattery?
…on IDEA
The ERC’s meeting with the “International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). Your Eyewitness couldn’t help but jump!! With all the revelations about USAID and its agenda after Trump froze its funding, he’s sorta paranoid nowadays about what’s really going down when these international bodies come into town.
IDEA – which has “a mandate to support sustainable democracy worldwide” – is supported by USAID. As to who gave IDEA its “mandate” is germane, innit??
Here’re some folks from western countries who decided on their lonesome that their “way of life” gotta be the standard for all other countries – whether they like it or not. IDEA’s also supported by the George Soros “Open Society Foundations”, which doled out some US$1.7B in 2023 alone!! He’s a true believer in Liberal values – the ones Trump and Musk are now exposing for their hypocrisy!! – and he puts his money where his mouth is!!
So, exactly what would IDEA be advising the ERC to do?? Allow ethnic abuse as “free speech”??
