…Durban Park dirt
It’s said that it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie…the point being when you wake them up, they may then just bite you on your bamsie!! Your Eyewitness is sympathetic, since he’s also not in the best of moods when he’s awakened form a sound sleep!! Opposition MP Annette Ferguson just demanded that Public Works Minister Edghill fix Durban Park – which she said had “fallen into disrepair”. She provided a pic that looked like it was taken straight out of Gaza after an Israeli bombardment!! Well!! Does she really want the PPP Govt to delve into the tragedy at Durban Park??
Burnham, of course – as he’d done to so many Guyanese institutions – destroyed what was then the premier venue for horseracing in our dear, old British Guiana!! There was a racetrack in every British colony and ours was right up there among the very best – where the colonial elite and their wannabees turned up to place their wagers as they downed their rum swizzles!! But even though he was a pretentious horse rider, as soon as he got independence, Burnham had the Homestretch Highway cut the racecourse in two. He placed the National Cultural Centre at the eastern end and Cuffy’s statue at the western dubbed Square of the Revolution. In between, he allowed the course to revert to swamp!!
Enter Granger the historian as president in 2015 – who then decides he’d recreate Durban Park as a world-class stadium where he would commemorate the 50th Jubilee Anniversary of Independence under a National Commemoration Committee (NCC) chaired by Ed Min Rupert Roopnarine!! He brought in some PNC/Army colleagues – Larry London and “Brigah” Bobby Viera – to realise his vision. They duly launched a private company Homestretch Development Inc (HDI) and appointed Roopnarine as a Director. They boasted that the stadium would accommodate 30,000 persons in its stands and would have the world’s longest flagpole at 200 feet!!
More to the point, they started collecting money from the Private Sector and appeared to have been extremely successful since that sector was slavering at the prospect of getting an “in” with the Government!! Contracts, baby!! Contracts. Evidently, they collected some $600 million which by April 2016 was exhausted and there was no stadium!! Granger turned over the project to the Min of Public Infrastructure in which Ferguson was a Junior Minister.
They allocated $300 million from the 2016 Budget to HDI and another $400 million from the Contingency Fund to deliver an incomplete wood ants-infested Stadium that was already falling apart for the Independence celebration!! Its descent into a haven for the homeless was inevitable and is an ironic commentary on PNC’s “independence”.
Maybe MP Ferguson might finally release an account of how the $1.3 billion was spent!!
…money changers
Seems that no matter how many times we hear we’ve got enough US$ in the system, businesses are always complaining about “shortages” when they try to fund their foreign purchases. The story’s told in the Good Book that Jesus was terribly upset with the Jerusalem Temple “money changers” – the precursors of our Cambio dealers today. “And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.” Now this is some serious precedent!!
Nowadays while everyone gets skittish when Governments intervene in the operations of the “free market”, we should know no market’s ever really “free” – and Governments must stabilize market operations. So while he’s not suggesting that BoG Governor Ganga – who’s responsible for our monetary matters – use a “whip of cords” on the Cambio dealers, he gotta get them in line.
He can use that “easy touch”!!
…that grave voice
The success of the Star Wars franchise is – to a large degree – dependent on Darth Vader, the Jedi who turned to the dark side. And that success was largely due to the voice of James Earl Jones – who just passed. RIP.
