…for pelf and power
At the Labour Day get-together – which was billed as a “love fest” because the two Labour factions would be marching to the National Park hand in hand after decades – Prime Minister Nagamootoo struck a discordant note. Even as he swayed like Michael Jackson breathlessly crooning “We are the world”, his upraised hands clutching the labourites’ belting out “Solidarity Forever”, he just couldn’t help himself.
Komal Chand, his old comrade from his PPP days, reminded Nagamootoo – who was representing Prezzie, so he had more outriders than usual – that he and his Government had abandoned the “collective bargaining” approach that any self-respecting working-class Government utilises with the trade union movement. Chand also reminded him how Wales’d been closed and its workers thrown into the streets without even a “sorry” from the Minister of Agriculture. Nagamootoo allowed all that to roll off his back.
However, when Lincoln Lewis made the same point about “collective bargaining”, Nagamootoo snidely carped that Lewis was stuck like a broken record and was senile. “I know he had been doing that speech for the past 20 years, so the day has come that he rocks to the motion…” Well! But what was it about Lewis’ delivery that drew this low, mean retort?
Well, Lewis placed his “collective bargaining” call within the context of how the APNU/AFC regime in general – and Nagamootoo in particular – had shafted Government workers on their promised “significant” salary increase. Lewis mocked the notion that Ministers – he didn’t call Nagamootoo’s name!! – had to get a 50% increase not to succumb to “corruption”. While Government workers got zilch!
“Give Government workers 50% and we ain’t gon tek no bribe,” Lewis shouted as he stared meaningfully at Nagamootoo. Well, Brother Bob did say “who the cap fit, let them wear it!” And man did Nagamootoo pull on that cap of “salary as bribe” real quick! The truth of the matter is Nagamootoo has stopped saying the things he’d been preaching for the last 20 years, not because he’s had an epiphany and seen the light. The sordid truth is he’s succumbed to the monthly .7M salary, the SUVs and the AC’d big house – not to mention jetting off into the blue yonder at the drop of the aforementioned cap!
Nothing’s changed about the “working class” Nagamootoo had written and spoke about when he was in the PPP with Dr Jagan. What has changed is Nagamootoo – who won’t even speak up when he’s been neutered.
Someone said maybe he’s gotten to like Larwah. But it wasn’t Lewis – it was an old comrade from back in the day!
…over crime alarm
Reacting to concerns that citizens are scared witless about crime, the Police said it’s all a tempest in a teacup. “Don’t worry, be happy…crime’s down” they assured all and sundry. Well, “all and sundry” just aren’t buying it. Even the PSC – not known recently for any radical anti-government stance – immediately fired off a missive to Prezzie demanding he’d better intervene with this latest police resort to statistics.
This has become a regular routine with these younger officers who went to UG where they imbibed the mantra, “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh*t”!! Hey… why the heck compare last year’s first-quarter’s crime rates with this year’s? Do those numbers compare the INTENSITY of the new crimes? Do those numbers tell about the BRAZENNESS of armed gunmen attacking a casino smack next to a police station?
Was a prison riot that claimed SEVENTEEN lives and left 1000 seething hardened convicts and remand prisoners in the centre of our capital city, in those figures?
Please Mr Police statistician…go take a hike.
…over Indian Arrival
The way your Eyewitness sees it…if folks other than Indian-Guyanese wanted to observe their “arrival day”, they’d have asked for it, nuh?
Why not follow TT and bow to the inevitable?
