…for trade unions?
It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world!! Not many today will remember that classic comedy caper from the 60s, where a bunch of strangers learn of buried loot and each try to find it for themselves. It was quite a gas!! And it would be same for the PNC’s efforts over the decades to earn some goodwill over the Enmore Martyrs, after they did – and continue to do – everything in their powers to destroy sugar workers.
By 1976, having rigged the 1973 General Elections to give itself a supermajority in the National Assembly and getting the Americans to go along with them, the PNC got busy trying to eclipse Burnham’s arch-rival Cheddi Jagan as a radical Marxist on the world stage. At the leftist World Peace Council meet in Bogota in June 1976, Burnham had his “anti-imperialist” credentials endorsed – to Jagan’s consternation, since the Americans were still backing him!! Burnham then announced the monument to the five Enmore sugar workers killed by the State’s Police Force on the orders of King Sugar on June 16 1948 – and got Jagan to support his nationalisation of Sugar!
Never mind that in 1974, Burnham had imposed the sugar levy that sucked up all the profit sharing the workers had won in 1968!! But “anti-imperialism” was the thing!! However, it wasn’t long after the Monument was unveiled in June 1977, that sugar workers were locked in a strike to end all strikes starting in August!! One hundred and thirty-five days of starvation and privation to remove that levy. Never happened!! But the workers got a monument!!
This year, FITUG – one of the two “umbrella” trade Union grouping, remember? – complained that after they demanded a WRITTEN INVITATION to the martyr’s commemoration, the responsible Ministry said they needn’t show up!! It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world!! That Ministry just happens to be responsible for Social Cohesion!! Now some may think FITUG was being a tad snarky to ask for that written invitation. But things aren’t so simple in Guyana, are they. Remember when the PPP was invited to the Jubilee Independence celebrations and no seats were reserved for them??
So what gives? Your Eyewitness is surprised the trade unions would even WANT to commemorate the supreme sacrifice made by sugar workers – which led directly to the independence movement of this country – with representatives of a PNC Government that not only unilaterally shuttered half of the sugar industry and 5700 sugar workers – BUT INCLUDED ENMORE IN THAT ACTION!!!
Maybe in 1948 those workers should’ve accepted “cut and load” instead of “cut and drop”. Since in the present, their trade unions has evidently “cut and run”!!
It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world!!
…for tobacco than rum??
Have you noticed the gruesome warnings that have to be posted on tobacco packaging to let smokers know of the just-as-gruesome fate that awaits them after they light up?? That one with the rotten, gangrenous toes made your Eyewitness almost gag!! Now don’t get him wrong, since he’s totally against smoking – which he always thought was a ridiculous act after some writer or other asked whether he could imagine even a cow, inhaling smoke from burning grass. (No pun intended!!)
What his gripe’s all about is why haven’t similar laws been passed to compel pasting on every bottle of the stuff the dangers of demon rum?? And those dangers are as bad – if not worse – than those of tobacco smoking. And we’re not even talking about the self-inflicted ones like cirrhosis of the liver. There are the dangers to the rest of society – like alcoholic induced rages that end up in domestic and other modes of violence!
Your Eyewitness doesn’t care about the rest of the world. Rum’s a menace to Guyanese society!! Warn them!!
…for UG’s VC
All across the world, the composition of University governing councils are being widened to ensure a diversity of views inform the delivery of higher education.
Save in Guyana, where the bow-tied one rules!!
