In our modern world, everything is monetised – even our private lives that can be shared on platforms like Tik Tok with millions of voyeurs who tingle from the experience of peeking into the said “private lives”!! But this monetisation started way before the social media explosion and of course the practice originated in our capitalist West where we accept that money makes the world go round!! One example can be illustrated by the visits of US ex-President Bill Clinton and UK ex-PM Tony Blair.
Now some may be wondering why they’re in Guyana. Let’s start with Blair who was Britain’s PM way back in 2007 and had to resign in disgrace!! He’d been elected in 1997 as the youngest PM in almost 200 years with great expectations for the dashing young leader at the helm of the Labour Party as Britain entered the second millennium. But Blair was full of himself and displayed a ruthless compulsion to become a world leader and it all came to a disgraceful end.
Launching what he called a “Third Way” – between the socialist left and the Thatcherite right – folks soon realised he was more opportunistic than pragmatic. And not only in domestic politics. After 9-11, he saw an opportunity become a world leader by becoming even more hawkish than George Bush – leading the charge to attack Iraq for having ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMDs)!! He concocted a “dossier” that purported to show that Iraq was manufacturing atomic weapons!!
His party leaders were soon on to him after no WMDs were ever found. He was dubbed BLIAR and hounded out of the Labour Party in disgrace. He had to resign as Party Leader and PM. But like a bad penny, Blair started to claw his way back into the public spotlight. In 2017, he founded – like former leaders of the US are wont to do – a Foundation to push his profile. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI). He was mentioned in the 2021 “Pandora Papers”.
With 800 employees in offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Accra – and enough money to stage the slickest political conference in Britain – he’s got a media team to manage his media “grid”. Then there’s a policy team to shape national debates, and a delivery team to project-manage his priorities across the world!! He churns out policy papers on everything under the sun – and we can be sure he has a briefcase full of them to pass on to Pres Ali to deal with our oil bonanza!!
And THAT’S what Blair’s visit is all about – how he can tell the world that he can get them a piece of the action in the biggest oil play in decades!!
…Slick Willie
The second visitor, Bill Clinton – US President between 1993 and 2001 – was dubbed “Slick Willie” in Arkansas long before the infamous Monica Lewinsky incident. The reporter who gave him the moniker marvelled at his ability to change positions to suit his political need! According to the respected LA Times, Bill Clinton changed the rules of political speech-making for cash after he demitted office in 2001. “He would push not just corporate hosts but also nonprofits and universities to pay fees well beyond what they were accustomed to.”
Up to then the going rate for a President speaking – say Reagan – was US$60,000 a pop. Clinton took that up to US$100,000 each for SIX speeches in one week in 2002!! In one instance ,it went to US$750,000 for a corporate event!! These monies plus donations are collected by the Clinton Foundation– and amount to billions!!
Your Eyewitness hopes our fearless reporters – who mercilessly grill our VP – would ask Bill how much the Dominicans paid him to accompany them!!
…joyous abandon
Today, your Eyewitness hopes our political leaders will hang up their political gloves and get into the spirit of Phagwah. Smearing powder on faces beats smearing reputations any day!! Happy Phagwah!!
