Following… the debate

Your Eyewitness tried to follow the goings on in the National Assembly – tried! It seems to be quite influenced its present lodging at the Convention Center – since they sounded like a convention of fishmongers hocking their catch under the direction of the Speaker-as-auctioneer!! The thrust of the “presentations” was formulaic – generally to deride the Budget’s proposals as presented by the finance minister (the opposition MPs) and to defend and extoll the same by the Govt MPs!! “Anything you can do, we can do it better” was the Opposition common thread!! This, of course, has been the form and format of debates in Parliaments ever since the riff-raff (“commoners”) were given their “House of Commons” to express their grievances at the actions of the Monarch from 18th century England onwards!!
The commoners tried (ludicrously!) to imitate their noble “betters” and introduced all sorts of rules and procedures to keep the interactions from breaking out into free-for-alls!!! Starting every declaration with “Mr Speaker” was required for “speaking through the Speaker” – and presumably less tendentiously than directly to each other!! The practice however – as exemplified by yesterday’s presentations – do tend to make matters rather boring. But that was the intention, innit?? Some MP’s tried to break out – one with quacking sounds!!
So, what stood out for your Eyewitness? Well, he’d predicted that Sanction Man would want to remove the image of his gang as a a bunch of foul-mouthed Scrapeheads!! They were handed scripts – prepared by well-paid local and foreign consultants – to take the “high road” and present “facts” to rubbish the PPP’s claims. As expected, their main line of attack was to show the Budget wasn’t “people centered” as advertised!! Predictably, they honed in on the measly $5000 increase for Guyana’s 96,000 pensioners!! Now the government knew when it came to putting money into people’s pockets, the Opposition would automatically dub their proposals “piddling”!! But they made the pensions too much of a low-hanging fruit!!
But the debate emphasized the importance of broadening representation in parliament to enrich the proceedings with insights drawn from new experiences. This was illustrated quite nicely by the WIN presenter who spoke about mining!! He pointed to what he claimed were very low declarations on gold – in a market where the US$5000/oz was pierced! He asserted very confidently that GOLD WAS BEING SMUGGLED OUT OF THE COUNTRY!! Now with his boss being a gold miner and gold trader who’s been sanctioned by the US OFAC for smuggling FOUR TONS OF GOLD through the US, he clearly has insider information on what’s going down!!
Maybe if Sanction Man’s WIN were as patriotic as claimed, they could’ve called a few names and identified some smuggling tricks?? Like reused seals??

…India’s folding?
Kenny Rogers crooned one of the most realistic pieces of advice about relationships – human and between nations – with the line from “The Gambler” – “you gotta know when to hold it and you gotta know when to fold it”!! For the longest while, India held off on the US demand that it cease purchasing oil from Russia – even after it’d stopped taking sanctioned Venezuelan oil exports – which had supplied a major Indian refiner for years. They were both heavily discounted.
But now after Maduro was extracted to face trial in the US, the latter not only unsanctioned Venezuelan oil, but mandated it be marketed by US and western firms. India was slapped with 50% tariffs on its exports as an incentive to wean it off Russian oil. Well, seems India and Modi decided to fold it and go along. The Incentive was US reducing its tariffs to 18%.
The test if it’s sucking up would be whether the “farm imports” allowed by US hurts India’s critical farmers!!

…sugar
They’d been sugar-producing colonies – British Guiana and British Honduras – in Latin America!! But now as Guyana and Belize, they’re collaborating to supply white sugar to Caricom!! On Pres Ali’s present state visit, however, they’ve widened the agenda to “food security”!!