Your Eyewitness has read that the EU has two electoral experts in Guyana right now, on a three-week visit, who’re preparing the ground for a visit by EU Parliamentarian Spain’s Javier Nart. Before he arrives, we’ll be having the First Vice-President of the European Commission (EC), Frans Timmermans, jetting in next month -the highest-level EU official even to touch our shores since the Dutch departed back in 1803!! What gives?? They really care about us that much??
Your Eyewitness knows folk wisdom advises that we mustn’t look a gift horse too closely in the mouth…but then he’s also been talking about Trojan Horses!! If you look at the latter in the mouth,maybe you’ll find out their motive!!? Take all that money the EU’s been sending to help us keep out the sea. From where your Eyewitness sits, that could be because it was a European power – the Dutch – who removed all our mangroves to create plantations that provided cheap cotton, coffee, and then sugar for Europeans!! And used African slaves to clear the mangroves – to boot!!
So, what’s all this interest in our electoral arrangements?? Well, the EU did field a pretty big delegation to observe the March 2020 elections, and observed firsthand the PNC trying to do the dirty with the SOPs!! As part of their report, after telling it as it was…they made several recommendations to try to prevent another attack on the foundations by the PNC’s minions!! It’s good that the PPP have already made it very clear that their recommendations are pretty much in sync with the EU’s. That is – fix what’s broken before going off on any frolic and detour, as the PNC wants us to do!!
And what’s broken?? Mechanisms and procedures for dealing with registration, counting, collating, and of course hiring of qualified personnel for GECOM. Campaign financing’s also a big issue – and your Eyewitness must agree with this as a priority item. While this will always be a bugbear – just look at the “lobbying industry” in the US – we gotta try to get some control before vested interests become too embedded.
What we don’t need at this time is another level of difficulty that the Opposition PNC’s been pushing through its proxies. That is, to reject elections as a mechanism for operationalising decision-making in a democratic fashion – and imposing some form of “power sharing” that will ensure the Opposition seizes de facto control of power after every election.
And how can this be done?? Just like how it controlled GECOM to try the Mingo rigging manoeuvre.
Through the fact that, like the GECOM Secretariat, the Civil Service and the armed forces are dominated by its supporters!!
…PNC’s thiefin’
The PPP called it, but many didn’t want to listen to them. As soon as they learnt the PNC wanted to lump together their accounts from 2015 to 2020 for the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to examine, they smelled a rat. Now, it mightn’t be so much any great analytical ability that led them to their conclusion – merely they know the creature for the past SEVENTY years!! So, it’s just remembering the PNC and its thiefin’ ways!! Starting with thiefin’ elections – and the people’s voting right denied for 200 years – you know there ain’t no limit to the PNC’s depravities!!
Now, because of the PPP members’ busy schedules, the PAC hasn’t been meeting as often as it should. The PNC should be happy, since in every meeting that’s been held…another PNC fraud gets uncovered!! The latest was a contract signed off in 2019 by their Amerindian Ministry before the Tender Board’s award!! Starting in 2021, there was the $33 million fraud uncovered in the Kato School-Feeding programme.
What’s lower that thiefin’ schoolchildren’s food!!
…ID for 21st century
In the brave new world we’re being catapulted into by technology, we all gotta have an electronic identity. Our Government’s ahead of the curve. But we gotta be careful of the Big Brother syndrome!!
