…message from Granger
Caretaker President David Granger decided to accept the request by representatives of the “ABCE” countries – America, Britain, Canada and the European Union – to meet and discuss his position on the CCJ rulings. These, of course, were handed down over a month and a half ago, and the ambassadors had been releasing releases to the effect that they hoped “all parties” would obey the Court and the Constitutional instructions that had been imparted, especially on the elections. To no effect, unfortunately!
Granger chose to schedule the meeting on July 31 – the day before “Emancipation Day”. To make sure the ABCE countries knew “where he was coming from”, he wore a dashiki – the only member of his team to depart from the Western-style garb that’s their everyday garb.
Now, in the estimation of your Eyewitness, both the timing and the garb were chosen to send a message to the named countries without even uttering a word. And what was that message? It was a very powerful one when one considers that the countries are all “white” countries that were implicated in one way or the other with the slave trade involving Africans. The US, of course, trafficked in African slaves, and retained the “peculiar institution” more than a quarter of a century after Britain had abolished it in 1838. No need to talk about “perfidious” Albion and the Europeans, which include the Dutch and Spanish. Canada benefited tremendously by supplying supplies like salted codfish to feed the slaves.
As such, Granger was pulling out the race card from his deck of options to get the “white countries” to get off his back!! He was telling them how dare they tell a black nation that had been enslaved by them what to do!!
But you protest, dear reader, that the ABCE are only telling Granger to do right by his own constitution? But Granger, like his mentor Burnham, knows all about “white guilt”, and is also not bashful about exploiting it!
Overtly, Granger would’ve assured the plenipotentiaries that, as an independent country, he was fully complying with the law – implicitly insisting, of course, that his idiosyncratic reading (to phrase it most kindly) of the Constitution and the CCJ’s orders is “fit and proppa”!
Placed on the back foot, Granger would’ve assumed the ABCE wouldn’t dare to be more direct in their recommendations than the CCJ did!! Like the latter, they would’ve muttered they hoped Granger would have the “integrity” to “do the right thing”, to use Spike Lee’s felicitous phrase.
Your Eyewitness, however, hopes the ABCE reps aren’t holding their breaths, since – in addition to getting red in the face – they might just be asphyxiating themselves.
The PNC ain’t going nowhere voluntarily!!
…for Haitians?
Haiti, of course, is the first country in the world to have emancipated its slaves. This, however, came out of its own revolutionary efforts between 1791 and 1804 — following the revolution in France. It was a remarkable effort for a nation of slaves to take on one of the mightiest European nations and come out victorious.
It came, however, at a price. A price in which a post-revolutionary France conspired with the new American Republic to hold Haiti in thrall ever since. As a result, Haiti, ironically became the poster boy for poverty in our hemisphere in that time, and their poor citizens have since been running from pillar to post to “find betterment”. It would appear that, just like Williams flooded T&T with small islanders to offset the numerical electoral “threat” from Indo-Trinis, this is also the plan of Granger’s PNC.
But the Haitians shouldn’t forget that most of those small islanders ended up in Laventille – which is still the largest slum in the island.
Some emancipation!!
…at airport?
Your Eyewitness ventured abroad. His passport was checked on entering the airport, at the check-in counter, prior to entering immigration lineup, at immigration, prior AND post scanner, at customs check of laptop, on entering the waiting area, at the gate, then at the stairs on boarding.
His passport’s been rubbed thin!!
