Your Eyewitness looked at the dozen protestors in front of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its supervisory Environmental Assessment Board (EAB) kvetching about the latter’s permits for companies storing wastes onshore without consulting citizens. Now, he’s got no problems with such protests – but wondered how many citizens they’d consulted before purporting to speak for “Guyanese” across our mudland!! A Baker’s Dozen persons were counted brandishing placards – but evidently 54 persons signed the petition they presented with their demands. So what happened with the other 41 that they couldn’t show up to picket?? Wasn’t important enough??
Now, from the experience of other countries – even the developed “advanced” ones – the disposal of wastes can’t be treated lightly. They really don’t just go away and almost inevitably impact communities in surrounding areas. So yes…we need the people disposing wastes to observe all necessary protocols. And it’s for this reason we need – and the government established – the EPA and the EAB. The protestors are therefore assuming and asserting that the EPA and EAB aren’t fulfilling their mandates.
Now your Eyewitness wasn’t born yesterday and he’s quite aware that there can be “regulatory capture” of such entities by big players – who literally want to get away with murder to make a buck. That’s the guiding principle of neo-liberalism, isn’t it?? But weren’t some such complaints taken to the courts where ‘satisfaction” was given?? Your Eyewitness remembers one in which an EPA permission to Exxon was limited by the Courts to five years. And didn’t the system work when a few months ago, the EAB overruled the EPA’s decision to waive EIA for radioactive storage facility at Coverden on the EBD??
Now there has been a blowback against some of the EPA protestors. From what your Eyewitness observed the major gripe is that it’s the same small bunch of “woke activists” who protest. They jump on every bandwagon that arises from “foreign” – but noticeably only the “developed foreign” of the US and Britain left-leaning “progressives” – whether the “cause” is applicable to Guyana or not!!
Take for instance, the call by some card-carrying members of the woke brigade for our oil to be left in the ground!! Seriously, are they for real?? We should worry about pollution in America while they created and are still sustaining it?? It’s this kind of off-the-wall thinking that turns off ordinary folks. Plus that these people wouldn’t ordinarily give them the time of the day!! The protestors should ground some more!!
But there was an interesting development exposed in the protest – former minister David Patterson – of gold band fame – holding a placard. So what happened to the rest of the AFC or PNC??
There’s been a parting of ways??
…about dead and migrated voters
In addition to shrilly insisting that the PPP’s constructing an “emerging apartheid state”, the Opposition’s been maintaining that the PPP rigged the last elections. So this became known to Mingo the day after the elections – after praising the conduct of the process! – by some clairvoyant process forcing him to pull out those spreadsheets and bedsheets??!! Well!! One prong of the “rigging charge” is that the PPP had dead and migrated folks voting. And this is some serious breach of the law – subject to equally serious sanctions!!
Now, a basic doctrine in law is “who asserts must prove”!! So now that GECOM’s passed on the list of names of those who committed the crime to the Police, shouldn’t the PNC cooperate so as to nail the PPP’s ‘treachery” to the wall? And not so incidentally, remove them from office?? But after GECOM asked the PNC for some more details so that the Police can go to addresses etc, they’ve REFUSED!!
Like with those mysterious SOPs!! Not too clever, eh??
…with cricket
The T-20 World Cup’s gonna be launched as this piece is being written. After pulling off such a fantastic CPL -T20 tournament ending, we Guyanese can see whether the Aussies can match us.
No can do!!
