…over now, baby
The AFC announced that coalition talks with the PNC – after being in intensive care for a while – are now officially over, and they’re gonna go into the elections later this year by their lonesome! As is usual with these happenstances, that ain’t new, a song popped into your Eyewitness’s mind; it begins like this: “Well it’s all over now, and we both know why/ ‘Cause we burnt our bridges as we passed them by/ Yeah it’s over now, and the dream is broken/ And all our bitter words, will have now been spoken.”
And bridges were certainly burnt!! Imagine telling Norton – the man with the biggest mass support in the Opposition from the oldest mass party with the boots on the ground – that he ain’t good enough to lead them into the elections!! It doesn’t matter what words the AFC brain trust used to tell him this, they had to be BITTER to a man who spent fifty years struggling to get where he is!! And in those fifty years, he picked himself up after Hoyte had fired him as PNC General Secretary, calling him, “My creature”, and clawed his way to the top!
The song continues: “Well it’s all over now, well it’s better this way/ ‘Cos long goodbyes well they eat your, your heart away/ It’s over now, well the cup is wasted/ Spilt and sour look, for what’s even tasted/ For all that we had, well now there’s more than us at stake/ History’s repetition it’s just too much to take.”
Your Eyewitness ain’t sure “it’s better this way”, since even the few votes the AFC’s gonna pull in the elections are significant in a country where the Government and Opposition have a razor thin gap between them!!
So, what lies ahead? The AFC’s gonna fade away into the sunset, since it betrayed its multiracial middle class claim to fame and shrank into an ethnic party fighting for relevance, as it flirted with the extremist WPA geriatrics foaming at the mouth with racist vitriol!! With the PPP’s full court press on all groups to share in Guyana’s free enterprise-grounded development, a new African Guyanese middle class is being formed that doesn’t see its future as being just glorified clerks. Business leaders from its ranks are leaving in droves – as demonstrated by the high-profile ones in the news!
As for the PNC, they’ll survive, thank you!! There’s enough inertia in the old base that’s gonna make it difficult for them to put their Xs anywhere but on the Palm Tree or its substitute!!
As such, the PPP’s gonna be returned to office to fulfil its vision of “One Guyana” – plucked from T&T’s National Anthem: “Here every creed and race find an equal place”!!
…in God’s name
“In God We Trust” started as an American political motto during their Civil War, when Union supporters wanted to emphasize their attachment to God. And with money forming the bedrock of the “American Way”, it soon appeared on their money – where it remains to this day.
But it had moved away from the centre of politics.
That’s all changed, according to the New York Times. They reported on “A presidential Easter greeting more directly evangelistic than those in the past. Trump and the First Lady said they were celebrating “the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity.”
(By contrast, the White House’s much shorter Ramadan statement last month sent “warmest greetings.”)
The language and rituals of the White House are changing. The first Cabinet meeting opened with prayer “in Jesus’ name.” Prayer sessions and even hymn-singing have broken out in the West Wing, in public and in private.”
A full circle??
…about execution
IDPADA-G complained at the NY African forum about “systematic marginalization of African Guyanese”. Burnham attempted rectification – but proved strategic vision ain’t enough. PPP’s showing a country must also have the capacity to implement such a vision!!
