When your Eyewitness thinks about Haiti nowadays, two old sayings rush to mind – “fair weather friends”, and “a friend in need is a friend indeed”. Well, just before the elections, a whole bunch of local Guyanese erupted in defence of Haitians, who were being trafficked through Guyana to the slums (favelas) of Brazil!! Man, you ought’ve heard them carrying on about our RESPONSIBILITY to Haiti for the historic role it played in defeating the army of the great Napoleon Bonaparte to eventually make the first black Republic in the Western Hemisphere!! Before Simon Bolivar!!
So, back to Haiti, which is in dire need of some friends right now, but, as it looks around, all it can see are “fair weather friends”!! We all know about the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 by those Colombian mercenaries – evidently hired by Haitian business interests. Roving gangs had already been controlling vast swathes of Port au Prince and its suburbs, and the armed forces appeared incapable of bringing them to heel. The system was so corrupt that the gangs had everybody in their pockets – where they could rummage around for small change!! The business class prospered because, no matter how poor and chaotic, there’s more money to be made in chaos!!
The UN forces were similarly ineffective – for the same reason of becoming corrupted. Then all the international aid disappeared down a black hole created by the same gangs and avaricious business class. Now, your Eyewitness is a fervent supporter of the view of the seminal role of the Haitian Revolution and Toussaint L’ Overture. He’s shown the path to all peoples who were forced to live in slavery and semi-slavery under the various Empires – British, Portuguese, French, German and even BELGIAN!! – how we can strike back at the Empire and bring it to its knees.
And for this reason, he’d supported those trafficked Haitians, who were desperately trying to get out of the hell-hole that Haiti had become for the longest while. Even the favelas of Brazil were heaven compared to their native land. But the question your Eyewitness posed then – and is posing again – is: what are we doing to help Haiti, apart from helping to help some individual Haitians?? We made Haiti a member of Caricom because, even though they were from the French Empire, we saw them as a member of the same “community” – a people honed by chattel slavery and oppression.
So, what your Eyewitness expects is that those who were up in arms about Haitian “exploitation” back in early 2020 should now join your Eyewitness to petition Caricom to add its 15 votes in the UN to support an intervention in Haiti!!
With OUR soldiers as peacekeepers.
…fans?
Man, oh man!! Did our boys take a shellacking from those Royals – who were really royal – yesterday at Providence? Looked like those Bajans were bowling an oversize black ball in a bowling alley – the way our wickets went down like ten-pins! We barely scraped a hundred, after the Royals had amassed a massive 195 – matching our own highest CPL score. That should’ve alerted our Warriors that these fellas had come out to prove a point. The point being that, with their record, they were playing for the pride of being number ONE!!
But, as the fat lady sang, “it ain’t over till it’s over”. Even though we lost the first game today after winning FOUR at home – hey, the law of averages had to kick in sooner or later, didn’t it?? – we play again tonight. And take it from your black-tongued Eyewitness – we’ll be getting back to our winning ways!!
And this will put us into the finals on Friday!!
…pedant
There’s this PNC SHADOW FOREIGN MINISTER who boasted that – unlike PNC supporters – PPP’s are “mentally lazy”. But here she was, mocking Pres Ali for pronouncing “Turkey” as “Turkey – ye” even though that country requested – and the UN’s accepted – that pronunciation!!
Mentally lazy??
