Now that the COVID rate has declined – to Guyanese, this means “disappeared”! – the Babu Jaan gathering of the PPP faithful resumed its old, humungous turnout. What better to showcase the new PPP than paying homage to its founder – and sustainer for an incredible TWENTY-EIGHT years – Cheddi Jagan?!! He epitomised the expression “never say die!!” With an exemplar like that, PPP supporters feel their party’s invincible!. Whatever reverses encountered gotta be temporary – once they keep the faith!!
Their opponents complain that the PPP believe they got a God-given right to run Guyana – but they’re mistaken. Their self-belief comes from Cheddi’s unshakeable faith in the “historical forces” – whose existence are immaterial since Cheddi’s belief was vindicated after almost three decades in the wilderness!! Now there’s some who would insist that this PPP isn’t the one Cheddi left.
That just reminds your Eyewitness about the story of the knife whose handle was changed after years of use and then the blade was changed after another decade. Was it the same knife?? To those who used it, it was!! And that’s what matters, doesn’t it?? Everything under the sun inevitably changes – but we accept this and move along!! The PPP of 1953 wasn’t the PPP of 1957 and so too the PPP of 1992 or 2023!! Even the rocks change!
Anyhow enough ruminations of the past!! What does the future bode?? Well, VP Jagdeo pointed out the new PPP by those who make the trek to Babu Jaan – with no party-hired trucks in sight!! It was the most multiracial crowd assembled in Guyana – outside of any Guyana Warriors home game!! And this was not just a happenstance. The moment they assumed office, the President, the PM and the VP had declared they’d be courting African Guyanese voters so as to break the racial divide that had bedevilled us so long. And they did it through actions that were visible to one and all – especially the targeted demographic!!
But this is scaring the bejesus out of the PNC and their camp followers. They’ve responded aggressively with a propaganda campaign over social media platforms – insisting that black is white!! That the PPP’s creating an “emerging apartheid state” in which African Guyanese were being “persecuted”!! Most of the viewers on these platforms are Guyanese “in foreign” and inevitably, they’re influenced by the Goebbelsian doctrine. Tell a lie repeatedly and soon folks gonna believe it’s the truth!!But at home African Guyanese know what they know – their lives are being transformed under the PPP! The proof was at Babu Jaan!!
Lastly, the VP explained the PPP’s merely COUNTERING the propaganda; NOT attacking groups carrying the PNC line.
And supporters gotta be involved!! Lest they become consumed.
…to settle disputes??
There’s much talk about moving away from the courts to settle civil disputes – especially commercial ones – by using “arbitration”. Well, the biggest dispute in Guyana is between our two major parties – which aren’t too civil!! Can we convince our politicians to agree to bring in some arbitrators so we can settle things and get on with the business of spending all that oil money to transform us into a South American tropical Abu Dhabi? ‘Cause that’s the first thing about arbitrations – the parties to the dispute gotta agree to go to arbitration and also who’ll be doing the arbitration!
And that last one’s a toughie, since, at a minimum, both parties gotta believe the arbitration panel gonna be fair – or they’ll cry foul!! But the PNC did so after the arbitration panel they’d agreed to – in the form of outside observers from across the world – declared the PPP winner of the elections!
Imagine the PNC cussing out and rejecting Barbados PM Mia Mottley as a fair arbitrator!!
