Forget all the fancy tomes written by political scientists, the Bard’s “Richard III” is the ultimate political text. Politics is about power and the compulsion to possess it being part of human nature that’ll never change!! Is there anything any modern ruler has done to secure power that wasn’t already tried by, say, Genghis Khan??
Anyhow, one lesson for politicians from “Richard III” is the importance of seemingly inconsequential support. In the middle of a critical battle, Richard famously cried out, “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” His horse was killed and he became impotent!! He searched the battlefield for hours, killing everything coming his way with fatalistic rage.
Something similar is happening to Aubrey Norton. He’s locked in a life-and- death struggle for political survival in a political system in which no quarter has ever been shown. Politics in our dear mudland, dear reader, ain’t the usual garden variety type like, say, Barbados. They weren’t called “Little England” and us “the Wild Coast” for nothing!! It’s in our blood? We’ve had assassinations of political opponents ordered by a President (Burnham); armed bandits calling themselves “Freedom Fighters” taking on the Police Force while massacring innocent citizens in their sleep, and the PNC Opposition Leader (Hoyte) saying, “Bandits?? What bandits??”
Anyhow, here you have it: Aubrey Norton was elected Leader of the PNC after the party base turned against David Granger. He dared to listen to the entire world that the PPP had been elected fairly and he should demit office!! How dare he??!! Would Burnham have ever done that?? Hadn’t the British Parliamentary Group headed by Lord Chitnis declared the 1980 elections “more crooked than barbed wire”??! Did Burnham budge?? Aubrey Norton was elected to follow in his “Founder Leader’s” footsteps and remove the PPP Government with the PNC’s “sharper steel”!!
But here it is, even though the slate he’d put together was elected in toto, he’s seeing them jump ship like lemmings!! From the word go, your Eyewitness hasn’t seen head nor (well coiffured) hair of Elizabeth Williams Niles, first Vice Chairman, after the first week!! Similarly with General Secretary Geeta Chandan-Edmond, dropping out of sight for months while the weak excuse was given that she’d “taken leave”. She’s taken leave all right – she resigned officially last week!! And this week, Fiaz Mursalene – the party Treasurer – decamped!!
How in the world is the PNC gonna become an (absolutely necessary) alternative to the PPP, when he’s got no lieutenants to stand by him?? But that’s exactly the situation in which Robert Corbin had found himself, innit?? He made the wise decision to step aside for a contextually more acceptable candidate. Will Norton be as wise??
…in Fiji
Tolstoy famously said, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But the aphorism also applies to nations – especially like ours – described as “plural societies”. Here, politics is desperate, but even though hard to believe, in Fiji, it’s even more so than us!! There, there’ve been at least four coups by the army, starting in 1987. As has happened here, the Indian indentureds whom the British shipped over to work in the sugar plantations still aren’t accepted as “real” Fijians, and it’s okay to overthrow Governments in which they even have a role!!
They’ve tried “democratic reform”, but, even then, the coups came. And the Indian Fijians fled. They just had an election on Dec 4th, with the incumbent PM – a coup leader – being challenged by another coup leader!! But they must’ve been following our political shenanigans, cause, with the Opposition leading, “a glitch developed” in the app reporting the results.
And when it was “fixed”, the Government then had an insurmountable lead!!
…on Masqueraders
Now, your Eyewitness likes his traditions as much as the next Mudlander. But masquerading started in the days of horses and biggies. Should they now be allowed to block traffic, when that’s already a national catastrophe??
