Hitting a nerve…on Tiger Bay

The PPP/C’s clearly hit a raw nerve in the opposition ranks when their Government – with Pressie directly involved – announced its revitalisation plan to raise GT beyond its glory days of its reputation as the “Garden City of the Caribbean”!! Starting with transforming the Tiger Bay slums into a model neighbourhood!! Well, who tells them to say that??!!! There was Black Pudding Man telling the Minister of Local Government – who’d done a walkabout – to “get the hell out of Tiger Bay!!”
APNU fired off a statement denouncing the announcement as nothing but a “publicity-driven rollout” and made all sorts of demands for “guaranteed incomes, youth-development support, anti-violence programmes, domestic-violence protections, livelihood training, and community-policing reforms”!! You’d have thought Tiger Bay only became a slum on August 2, 2022 – when they were voted out of office!! What had they done for Tiger Bay during their five years at the helm?? Wasn’t State House, with Granger inside, cheek and jowl with Tiger Bay – as President Ali said it was with his??
Along with Sherod Duncan – WIN’s “Shadow of the Shadow Housing Minister” – they demanded the plans for the renewal. You can’t blame them: the PNC was always full of plans (among other things)!! Executing those plans has been their fatal weakness!! And now comes David Patterson with a long missive to the press echoing the same complaints!! “David Who?” you ask?? How quickly you forget, Dear Reader!! Does the Bangle Man – who was APNU/AFC Public Infrastructure Minister – ring a bell?? Yup!! Same fella!!
He’d found himself in the AFC for the last elections – then found himself without even a seat in Parliament!! Amanza stole their supper!! Well, it seems he’s been handed the leadership of the AFC after the mathematically challenged leader resigned!! For the fourth time?? But who does Bangle Man speak for when he was rejected so roundly by the people??!! If he really wants to help those Tiger Bay slum dwellers, maybe he can offer his services as a surveyor – which was always his day job!! –when the PPP/C gives them their house lots??
But the question your Eyewitness has is why all these opposition types have gotten their bucktas in a knot when the PPP/C’s doing what it had been doing for five years – getting up close and helpful with Afro-Guyanese communities?? Didn’t the PNC encourage the Indian-led WIN – wink! Wink!! – thinking Sanction Man would syphon off the PPP’s Indian supporters?? But the latter had the last laugh when it was the PNC Scrapeheads who crossed over!!
The real fear is that from 31 to 16 seats it might next be none for the PNC – and the PPP having a two-thirds majority in the house!!

…with more (PNC) departures
So what does the resignation of former Mayor of GT, Ubraj Narine, from the PNC Executive mean for the part Forbes Burnham carved out from the original PPP back in 1955 – and formalised in 1957?? Let’s remember that whatever may’ve been his faults – and these were legion!! – Burnham understood that in multi-ethnic Guyana a party that aspires to be national always has to have a multi-ethnic leadership.
Even if it were a façade, that façade HAD to be maintained!! So he insisted that contrary to the evidence at elections, Latchmansingh and Jainarine Singh were Indian leaders. From Ubraj’s resignation statement, it seems that leader Norton doesn’t share Burnham’s sentiments!! Your Eyewitness wonders whether he now shares his confidante’s – Black Pudding Man’s – assessment that when Ubraj upbraided the latter’s ally’s derogatory remarks on Indians, he was a “Slave Catcher”??
Whatever the reason, this departure ain’t gonna be the last. So your Eyewitness hopes the last person to leave will turn off the light on the PNC!!

…with Granny
As Pressie continues his now perpetual meet-the-people tours, he has to field all sorts of requests. One from left field was from a sprightly Granny who complained that the cost of her hair dye keeps getting raised by greedy shopkeepers!!