Fighting for… (PNC) survival

From where your Eyewitness sits (on a high perch like those tennis umpires!!) it’s clear to him that the PNC’s desperately seeking survival!! They’re caught in a vice between the PPP – using the oil revenues to create a new win-win situation where EVERYBODY can have their cake and eat it too – and the WIN party using their ill-gotten gains from smuggling gold and God (or OFAC) knows what! Last week, Norton – decked out in a Dakshiki – joined his party in celebrating “Ghana Day and took the opportunity to identify what had gone wrong and what should be done to fix it!!
Now Ghana Day’s a very historic occasion for the PNC – going back all the way in March 6, 1957 when Ghana became the FIRST colony in all of Africa to be granted independence!! Even though both Cheddi and Burnham were acquainted with the Ghanian leader Kwame Nkrumah – it was understandably the PNC that marked the occasion, since after splitting the PPP in 1957 most folks of African descent had moved behind Burnham!! He’d pulled a particularly humungous GT crowd in 1959 that pretty much secured him the mayoralty that year!! And gave him a bully pulpit for the 1961 elections!! African pride was a low hanging fruit that was too tempting for Burnham not to pluck it – even though prior to that he’d shown no inclination or penchant towards practicing African culture!! It was western-cut suits and a Churchillian English accent that he affected to great effect!!
Now Aubrey’s a fella who knows his history – and it looks like he really thinks he can get history to repeat itself!! At the function, he honed in on the demographic that had deserted the PNC banner en-masse last year – the youths. While not brave enough to take total responsibility for that debacle, he allowed that the party had misread that demographic and been very critical of them!! Maybe he was referring to the Scrapehead label that was appropriated by the departed hordes?? Anyhow, he illustrated the point he wished to make by referring to a recent youth who had on a WIN shirt and who replied to his query as to why he voted as he did by claiming the motorbike he was riding was given to him by Sanction Man!!
Now it’s important to know how Aubrey replied – since it illustrates his strategy going forward to rebuild the PNC. And no!! he didn’t tell the Scrapehead that he was gonna be handing out motorbikes going forward!! He rather complained that the PNC youths hadn’t been educated about their history – for example that Sanction Man and his Daady had financed Death Squads to kill black youths!!
Yup!! Expect divisive vitriolic rhetoric!!

…order in the city
Talking about commemorating Ghana Day, most folks forget that our national Hero Cuffy – whose uprising we commemorate with the 1763 Monument – was a Ghanaian!! Well, he was a member of the Akkan tribe who live in Ghana!! Anyhow, the Mayor &CC decided that this was the time to inform the vendors who’d invaded the space around the monument – and made it anything but monumental!! – that they had to move out chop-chop!!
Your Eyewitness expects that critics will be coming out of the woodwork pleading for the vendors to make a living!! But jeez…have we no sense of propriety – or shame for that matter?? How can we expect to be taken seriously by those who’ve insisted for hundreds of years that we’re “savages”?? Can you see the Brits – a nation of shopkeepers we’re told!! – setting up shacks selling fish and chips under Nelson’s Monument in Trafalgar Square??
C’mon people…we’ve already desecrated Republic Day by wining down in Mash. Could we have some respect for Cuffy’s sacrifice??

…higher education
UG’s our sole tertiary educational institution!! And as such – regardless of the number of GOAL scholarships – responsible for our “higher” education. It hasn’t been doing that job very well. But its two-term VC’s about to be replaced.
Progress!!