Free speech is protected by the Constitution – no one can mess with that right. Right? Except for some sleazy dictators in countries like North Korea and their wannabe imitators in Guyana like the Prime Minister and his shill. But free speech isn’t just being able to speak your mind to the person next to you. It becomes meaningless when you’re prevented from using available technology to share your thoughts.
And it’s not just about the Opposition being unable to get its press conferences covered by the Chronic. It’s about me and you not being able to use the latest technology in voice and data transmission to share our thoughts with the world – like everybody else does – at the lowest cost because of a decision made by the PNC 26 years ago. Like Faulkner said – the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past!
Your Eyewitness was plunged into this deep funk by the latest “announcement” – the “Telecommunications Bill” will be laid in Parliament for debate “before the end of May”. Whoopi!!” This bill was supposed to’ve been passed since 2012! Now our worthy MPs would’ve returned from their 56-day recess on May 4th…why can’t they get to it right away? And we know the schoolchildren will be given a special one-week holiday the “last week of May”, so you can be sure – like always – the Parliamentarians will be following suit.
So let’s return to why the past is still haunting us by stifling our freedom to communicate. Back in 1990, the PNC privatised our Telephone Company. For a song – as we wrote some time ago. But to rub salt into the wound, they also agreed no one could compete with GTT for another 20 years. But you’ll say, Dear Reader, the 20 years was up since 2010.
Well, go to the head of the class…but the PNC hadn’t quite done with us…they’d also rubbed pepper into the wound by giving GTT the right to decide whether they want to “give up” the monopoly!! Can you believe it? Who’ll give up a monopoly, a licence to virtually print money?
Not GTT! And you can’t blame them. So we’ve had scads of competitors – the biggest one being Digicel – holding their breath for GTT or roll over and play dead.
Now, some might say, what’s the present Government to do, with the “sanctity of contracts” and all that jazz. Well…do what even that bastion of America has done. Break up the monopoly!!
But you and I know it ain’t gonna happen. In the meantime, GTT are bringing in some big foreign acts for the Jubilee.
Give the natives more baubles! And they’ll communicate with drums!
…to extract communications
The Crime Chief’s (CC) getting a tad testy about what he feels is unfair criticism. He complained, “It’s very appalling that persons are criticising us for not solving crimes and others are questioning the way we are solving them.” He was reacting to one citizen becoming leery about the spike in solving crimes after “confessions”. Now the CC wouldn’t have exactly allayed suspicions by his riposte: “When we have a suspect in custody, I always advise that we interview them intensely. In most cases, they crack and confess.”
“Interview them INTENSELY.”!!??! Your Eyewitness can just see the rubber truncheons wielded by burly policemen reducing suspects into quivering lumps of jelly under the glare of the 55W bare bulb! Of course, they’ll “crack and confess”!
But seriously folks, we have to be concerned about police interrogation techniques to “solve” crimes –- if for no other reason than it could be us at the receiving end of the truncheon.
…to raise healthy babies
Not only is the First World shipping their cigarettes and fried chicken because they’re not good for THEM. Now they’re shipping baby milk with vegetable oil.
If coconut oil’s so good in the formula, why don’t the fellas importing the fake milk give their kids directly?
