…but that’s true love!
It was another glorious night at Providence National Stadium! After all the tensions the PNC had generated in the society by stretching out the date for elections after the successful NCM, ordinary Guyanese of all persuasions came out in numbers and showed us what Guyana could be if we follow the lead of the people. It was a Guyana of joy, love, happiness, fun and togetherness!!
What was illustrated, when you come down to it, even though we may be a “land of six peoples” and have not quite become “one nation, one people” we share more things than the few that divide us. What we saw at the Stadium was that to every man (and woman) Jack, the “Warriors” was “we own”…with the emphasis on the “we”!! When the Warriors started out carefully, we all were encouraging them on. When they faltered in the middle, the support grew even stronger. And when the bowlers went after the ball and scored an amazing 65 runs in the closing 5 overs, the Stadium was literally rocking!!
The question some of you may have is why can’t we replicate this love and unity of purpose in other sections of national life? But we do! Did you see how the ordinary folks responded to the Demerara Harbour Bridge disaster? Did you see those orderly queues we made as we patiently waited our turn to board the “speed boats” from both the Vreed-en-Hoop and Stabroek Stelling sides?
Do you see the camaraderie of all our peoples in the markets as we rub shoulders to take care of our daily bread – or roti as the case may be?! People, let’s not kid ourselves. Spared the Hurricanes and earthquakes that regularly bedevil our Caribbean neighbours, and blessed with of our continental land of many waters and resources, why do we yet have the tensions we do?
The first thing we should note is tensions always rise when elections are in the air. So do we stop elections? Well, we really can’t since we’re done with the age of monarchies! But democratic elections are a “numbers” game and therefore encourage politicians to get those numbers by any means necessary. Including demonising “the other” – albeit surreptitiously.
Are there other ways of selecting our governments or handling our national affairs to encourage cooperation rather than division? What we know is that just as we can’t have the warring parties settle that conflict – they need some outside help. It’s the same with our politics.
It’s time ordinary folks like those who showed up at Providence start insisting we need a better way!!
After all, even politicians from opposite sides were united in supporting the Warriors!!
…meeting with Haitians and Africans
Your Eyewitness does think Heath-Retemeyer doth protest too much about meeting Haitians and Africans at Critchlow College! OK…he can see Felix meeting with those who have problems with “papers”. After all, he’s Minister of Citizenship and is in charge of issuing said papers. But why only these two groups? What about all those thousands of Cuban visitors he expatiated on to huffily dismiss charges that Haitians were being facilitated to pad the voters list? You mean to say no Cuban has problems with papers??
And why should the Minister himself be dealing with immigration matters at this granular level when he has all those myrmidons to handle the minutiae?? Was the meeting advertised? How did these Africans and Haitians know about it? The meeting with these two groups had to be coordinated by somebody or bodies. And what was the turnout. Ah…there are so many questions in this special time of our political calendar!!
But what’s most baffling is why was Heath-Retemeyer, CEO of the State Asset Recovery Agency (SARA) there?
Had the attendees pilfered state assets?
…request
Your Eyewitness was thrown for a loop. GPL is NOW seeking power providers!?! For goodness sake, what has the new company, Power Producer and Distribution Inc, done after the Govt threw out Wartsilla??
