Written right after the “Great War” – WWI – in 1919, Yeats, in his “The Second Coming”, contemplated the horror of millions dying in the supposedly “civilised” Europe that was “teaching” the rest of the world to also become “civilised”. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” Four decades later the great African writer Achebe was to ironically title his novel on British civilising of Africa “Things Fall Apart”!!
But here we are in Guyana – more than a century after Yeats’ epiphany and more than five decades after independence from the Brits – it seems to your Eyewitness there are elements in our Opposition who wanna guarantee things falling apart here. They’ve certainly been trying!! Racial riots in the 60s to oust the democratically-elected PPP Government; racially-directed violence against the Opposition by the quaint sounding methods of “choke and rob” and “kick down the door bandits”. And in the new millennium, “slow fyaah; mo fyaah” that turned Guyana into one gigantic killing field!!
Yeah…things fell apart all right. We dumped the rule of law which the British assured us was the way to civilisation and turned to the law of the jungle. Guess our leaders cynically saw the Brits making up the law as they went along to keep us down and out. But what about today?? We’ve finally gotten to a point where we can begin to see the (economic) light that kept our lives nasty, brutish, and short. And we finally have a situation where no one group has a built-in majority to win elections. The PPP’s milking this for all its worth by giving the African Guyanese constituency a full court political press such as never been seen before!!
And the Opposition’s running so scared it’s atavistically reverted to the old, confrontational politics that must’ve seeped into its collective psyche. Moving away from Georgetown, scene of Hoyte’s slow fyaah; mo fyaah, the latest PNC tactic is to protest in the rural areas; block the single Public Road to traffic; haul Indian Guyanese drivers from their vehicles; give them a condign beating and then torch the vehicle!! We’d seen this when CANU pursued a ganja dealer through Buxton and now on Sunday night when a motorist accidentally struck down a couple on an electric scooter at Hopetown.
Interestingly, while there’s a Police Station at Hopetown, like at Buxton, it seems their new SOP is to allow the mob to vent its anger – and move in only after the said anger subsides.
Vigilante “justice” is now in!!
…Dante’s Inferno
Dante described Hell (“Inferno” in Italian) in such graphic terms that 700 years later it still gives your Eyewitness the creeps and keeps him on the straight and narrow!! If we wanna know what happens when things fall apart on earth, then we only need to look at Haiti ever since they won “independence” more than 200 years ago. Like they say be careful what you wish for!! But we shouldn’t snicker. After 28 years of PNC rule we were brought to hover just above the hellish conditions of Haiti by Burnham. And remain there today.
The latest turn on their sad saga was mercenaries assassinating their president and the installation of a replacement. Meanwhile, the gangs continue controlling the capital Port-au-Prince and have gotten stronger, making the lives of the citizenry more hellish – if that were possible. A recent poll showed 69% Haitians backing an outside force intervention; but 80% want the local Police buttressed by them.
What says Guyana to sending soldiers??
…ganja business
From the reports of the daily busts, looks like the incentives have already worked to create a very lucrative ganja agri sector. Isn’t it time we work on getting legislation in place to legalise cultivation like the US is doing??
