As sure as the sun rises in the east – or the Pope will offer another apology for the paedophile priests, but won’t punish them – the GPSU has come out swinging against the PPP Government!! And trust this Eyewitness that it came out on the eve of Emancipation Day, when the PNC and its camp followers are organising a massive protest against the said Government that is as coordinated as Hitler’s Waffen SS goosestepping in Berlin!! It’s all going down in Georgetown, baby!!
Shades of 1963, when they struck for 80 days on behalf of the PNC, and brought down the PPP Government to install it in Government! Or 1999 when – after the PNC had ruled dictatorially for 28 years – they came out again for 55 days in tandem with a rampaging PNC, and bludgeoned the PPP to a 36% wage increase against a background of widespread violence on perceived supporters of the PPP. Or, every time the PNC wanted to shake-up the PPP, they were always there to do their bit.
In 2020, they called out their nurses in the midst of the COVID pandemic to demand a bonus – which the PNC had reneged on just the year before, when they were in power. And here they are again, screaming that the PPP’s ignoring the collective bargaining process and “imposing” wage increases.
Well, how is it that, when the PNC was in power between 2015 and 2020, the GPSU was like a pussycat when “their government” reneged on their pre-election promise to give ALL Government workers SUBSTANTIAL pay raises. Which turned out to be ONE-QUARTER of the 50% raise the PNC gave itself!! And never engaged in collective bargaining – but accepted unilaterally-imposed increases??
But we know – and the PNC knows – that because of its strategic control of the Government’s bureaucracy, the GPSU can always cripple PPP Governments. If politics is war by other means, GPSU threats and strikes are PNC’s politics by proxy!! It pays to occupy strategic arms of the state, and it’s why the PNC will never encourage its supporters to move out of the Public Service into, say, private enterprise, even though they’d do much better there!! Instead, they keep agitating and building resentment about being excluded! Gotta keep those grouses going, baby!!
Anyhow, the GPSU – under its evident president-for-life Patrick Yarde – has announced that not only has the PPP Government “ignored collective bargaining” (a union matter), but “also charged that there was discrimination in the allocation of resources across the country” – a political matter!! They threatened that they’ll first be going to the courts, and then…they’ll take to the streets.
Well, in tandem with the Emancipation Day protests by the PNC, we know what to expect!! Forewarned is forearmed?
…for perpetrators?
Your Eyewitness just heard – not through the grapevine! – that the Government’s introducing legislation – the Restorative Justice Bill – for “repairing the harm caused by an offence”. Our justice system, of course, is guided “punitive justice” – derived from the old “eye for an eye” perspective: “if someone does the crime, he should do the time”. Now while punishing the perpetrator, the victim could possibly seek redress as a civil matter, but the state system didn’t bother with that angle.
Of recent, there’ve been calls for this to be rectified, so that victims of crimes could be made whole as far as possible through actions of the state. So, your Eyewitness was thrown for a loop when he realised that this Bill on “Restorative Justice” was designed to “restore the PERPETRATOR” to the status quo ante as far as possible!! With the agreement of the victim, if the perpetrator accepts responsibility for the commission of the offence… he’ll be forgiven??
How does this repair “the harm of the offence”?
…on Emancipation
So, there’s gonna be a big gathering at, significantly, Burnham Court, by APNU and WPA on Aug 2, to show the PPP the power of “boots-on-the-ground politics”.
Looks like “votes-in-the-box” politics was abandoned on March 2, 2020!!
