…corruption?
Your Eyewitness would like to ask the question frontally – and brutally: is it possible to get rid of corruption in general, and in Government in particular?? And he’d like to give you his answer just as frontally and brutally – NO!! There aren’t any ifs and buts about this; corruption is endemic to the human condition. One famous philosopher who’s quoted all over the place for centuries on these matters pronounced, “Out of this crooked timber we are made.” We come into the world already bent towards corruption. We didn’t need any apple to bend us, or any serpent to stray us!!
So, does this mean we gotta accept corruption?? Absolutely not!! Some people are also born with the urge to kill their fellow human beings: should we allow the Ted Bundys of the world to get away with their cold-blooded slaughter?? More to the point, we’re all born with the urge to either lay or get laid with whomever turns us on. Do we allow folks to bop others on the heads like the cavemen and cavewomen of yore, and drag them into their lairs to satisfy their urges?? No siree Bob!! The thing is, we gotta set up rules of the game to control those tendencies that are detrimental to us as a society living the good life.
So, now about corruption? The first thing is that we all gotta follow your Eyewitness’s philosophy as stated above and assume that EVERYONE is out to screw you over. That shopkeeper selling you rice?? Check his scale. That contractor bidding for contracts?? Check out if he’s bribing the folks in charge of procurement. The contractor executing the contract for a road or a bridge or whatever? Check out if he’s bribing the Government supervisors – and so on and so forth.
But because corruption didn’t just drop from above in 2020, the Government can reasonably point out that it has ALREADY put in place institutions to do the exact checking your Eyewitness mentioned!! There’s a public bidding process and system; there are folks appointed by the Government to oversee the procurement process, and so on; but yet the accusations of corruption keep coming faster and more furious than Vin Diesel!! The question is what the Eternal One signalled all the way back to Roman times: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guardians?? In this case, who will keep tabs on them in an infinite regression?!!
Well, since the corruption we are worried about right now concerns the Government spending our money, the suggestion by VP Jagdeo brings us – John Public – into the picture. He advises that the moment we suspect or hear about corruption in public life, we have a duty to go public!!
Let’s all get whistles and start blowing!!
…occupied Coastlands??
According to Pres Ali, we’re fast running out of coastlands, so we gotta come up with a plan to satisfy the new demands arising out of his government’s developmental plans!! Well, to your Eyewitness, the solution’s pretty simple: just as the U.S invented the slogan “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN!!” when their East Coast started getting crowded, we can encourage everyone needing land to “GO SOUTH, YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN!!”
Now, your Eyewitness is aware that the President warned against cutting down our interior forests, which we’re committed to preserving. But we know that down south ain’t all forests!! There’s the sand and clay belt where Silica City’s being constructed; then the vast Intermediate Savannahs where we’re planting soya and corn. Not to mention the Rupununi Savannahs that can swallow Jamaica without even burping.
We just gotta build more roads and railways to those areas!!
…unequal framing?
In the Hamas-Israeli way, we’re confronted by the personalised stories of the Israelis killed, but never those of the Palestinians. On Yahoo, we read of the “mourning Manhattan mother whose free-spirited 26-year-old Israeli daughter was killed in Hamas brutal weekend rampage.” At best, we read that “676 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops earlier this year”!!
