To your Eyewitness, looking on at the Guyana Press Association’s elections, he confirmed what the American baseball legend Yogi Berra – famous for his malapropisms – once said: “You can observe a lot by just looking”!! And what did he observe?? As another Yogism pithily declared, “It’s déjà vu all over again”!! What came to mind was the chaotic denouement of the 2020 March elections to decide who’d run Guyana. Here the stakes seemed to the incumbents just as high to decide who’d run our local Press Association!!
The elements were all there. Was the voters’ list “clean”?? Were there names of folks who weren’t supposed to be there?? Here, the GPA executive did one better than GECOM and refused to even show anybody the names on the list so they could be verified – or rejected – as being kosher!! Now your Eyewitness ain’t no lawyer, but surely this stonewalling to even the SOLE challenger to the GPA’s Head to see the names had to’ve violated some principle of fairness – not to mention due process??
But even if he WERE an ambulance chaser, your Eyewitness COULDN’T have raised questions of “due process”!! “And why, pray tell,” you asked, Dear Reader?? Well, just like with our national elections, the GPA elections had reached the Courts even before a single ballot had been cast!! One of the main purveyors of the new journalism – that’s confined to hyperspace and the Internet – was told in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t a Journalist!! Having the largest viewership of his news than any other Guyanese media entity – especially those of the various and sundry newspapers – the fella not unreasonably took umbrage!!
But the Chief Justice then declared he couldn’t take his umbrage to the Court!! She incredibly pronounced that the GPA was not a “body corporate”, whose bona fides and operations were subject to judicial review!! So, it would appear that the Executives of the GPA could do what they want!! Evidently, all they’d been doing for the decades they’ve been in existence was to register the name “Guyana Press Association” annually in the name of the incumbent president!!
So they were just like picking the teams in a schoolyard pickup cricket match: the fella who brought the bat could decide to walk away with it right after he was given out!! Anyhow, at the elections – which were appropriately held at the Theatre Guild – there was a surfeit of histrionics!! And just as with the Big Elections, there were shouting and screaming – with frequent appeals made to the Returning Officer. Luckily there were no SoPs and eventually, he declared the incumbent as the winner.
But as Yogi said, “It ain’t over till it’s over!!”
…on Venezuela
When it comes to dealing with other countries, it’s imperative we remember the golden rule: “There are no permanent enemies or permanent friends – just permanent interests”. Take this latest announcement by CAL that they’re resuming flights to Caracas. Sounds quite innocuous, doesn’t it?? But when you consider the US just broke its own sanctions against the dictator Maduro’s regime to allow Trinidad to develop the trillion-cubic-feet gas Dragon Field, it’s starting to add up, isn’t it??
This followed the US licensing Chevron to resume exploiting its oil concessions in Venezuela and, therefore, bringing in hard currency from oil shipments!! Gradually, Venezuela’s been brought in from the cold – and relations normalised. So, where does it leave us?? The question is, what’ll be Venezuela’s stance on our border – and Exxon’s exploitation of our oil? And the answer’s a no-brainer!
The Venezuelans will never back away from what they see as their historic right. So, the real question is whether 300 billion barrels of oil are more than 13 billion!!
…and new political movements
Have you noticed that in the space of two days, there has been the launching of two political movements?? Don’t bother with the one in Berbice calling itself “Volunteerist”. Remember the Red and Blue Caps??
