Now far be it for your Eyewitness to deny anyone their right to get involved with politics – being a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat all his (long) life!! And that doesn’t mean folks just showing up every five years at campaign rallies to then put their Xs opposite the symbols of people who think they can run the country. It also means THEY can put THEIR names on the ballots to gather Xs and become President!!
So, when he speaks about “upstarts,” he don’t mean no disrespect to those who’ve decided to enter the political hustings by not joining up with any of the veteran parties – namely the PPP and the PNC – but launched their own parties!! But they earn the monicker “upstarts” when they start acting as if they’re gonna actually REPLACE those parties—on their first outing!! The term came to your Eyewitness’ mind when he read a missive from that old sacakwoo Hamilton Green – who recently conferred the title “Elder” on himself. Note that he doesn’t mean he’s OLD – which he certainly is – but that he’s a fount of wisdom because he’s old!!
Anyhow, the PNC’s old – as in past – enforcer analysed the parties contesting the Sept 1st elections using an extended (and strained) metaphor of a horse race on the “homestretch” of a racetrack!! He described “…a filly, with a jockey in purple, not yet politically matured, thinking and being led to believe by sycophants that they are, with just a few years of political internship, right and ready for the final gallop of the homestretch. One can hardly ignore the story of Narcissus. Narcissus thought he was the most beautiful and was consumed with his own self-adulation, rejecting all others. The gods, according to Greek mythology, turned him into a flower.”
He was clearly putting down Amanza Walton-Desir, who’d exited the Elder’s PNC to launch her own “Forward Guyana” party after only being in politics since 2020 – when she was appointed an MP. But isn’t Green being disingenuous about Desir when his hero Burnham demanded to become leader of the PPP over Cheddi even though he’d just returned as a lawyer – with NO experience in politics??!! And Cheddi had been toiling away in the political field for seven years – and had become an MP!! Meanwhile, Burnham had already been given the chairmanship!
What’s more narcissistic than that?? As for the dig about the colour purple – Desir’s Party wheel-symbol’s colour, which is associated with royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition – wasn’t this also Burnham’s colour?? And he was so full of himself he renamed three Bauxite villages as “”Linden – his given name!!
Ahhh… there are none so blind as they who will not see!!
…OFAC’s sanction
Some folks are getting a bit bassidy about a seeming disjuncture between a US State Dept instruction to their ambassadors on pronouncements on their host countries’ elections and the statement of their Guyanese Ambassador on Mohamed’s WIN presidential bid. They really gotta get used to making close readings of diplomatic language!!
What were the original instructions? “When it is appropriate to comment on a foreign election, our message should be brief, focused on congratulating the winning candidate and, when appropriate, noting shared foreign policy interests.” The key phrase is ”when appropriate, noting shared foreign policy interests.”
And what did Ambassador Theriot say? “We are concerned anytime an… OFAC-sanctioned individual has the potential to become a member of Government. As the US Government…we have to be very careful if that person is involved; let us say he is on a certain committee. We would have to ensure that when we work with that committee, we don’t work with him specifically.”
OFAC sanctions imply US foreign policy interests!!
… nuclear North Korea
Talking about “US foreign policy interests,” whatever happened to those interests and nuclear-armed North Korea under Dictator Kim Jong Un? Unlike Iran – which didn’t even have the enriched uranium to make a bomb – North Korea’s ICBMs can deliver theirs into the US!!
