…in the US transition
It’s clear the American establishment just doesn’t know what to do with Trump. How’d you deal with a man who’s about to step into the most powerful office in the world – bar NONE – who takes time to tweet a vicious riposte to the actress Meryl Streep who’d rapped him on the knuckles at the Golden Globes Awards for belittling a disabled journalist. He called the THREE-TIME Academy Award winner “overrated”!!
But as your Eyewitness has pointed out before, in his refusal to play the diplomatic game with his instinctive lashing out at critics, Trump’s uncovering a lot of skeletons that had long been buried. Like his calling out the US intelligence agencies, not only on their reports of alleged Russian “hacking” and the usually sacrosanct Middle East orthodoxy, but also on the release of a dossier that claimed he had been compromised by the Russians.
Said Trump to a press Conference, in which he refused to take questions from CNN, “I think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out. I think it’s a disgrace, and I say that… that’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do.” Now these are fighting words from the President-to-be who’ll be briefed every morning by these agencies.
This ability to shape the President’s take on world affairs has up to now given the intelligence agencies tremendous power in shaping his views. There are sixteen of these agencies with a total budget of US BILLION!! The CIA alone uses more than one-quarter of that. Trump and his transition team have not backed away from the confrontation with the CIA− even though in the last case its head has vehemently denied Trump’s allegations.
Release of declassified documents revealed that Presidents all the way from Truman after WWII had problems with agencies such as the FBI, under Hoover. But all swept their differences under the rug − some say because the agencies had the “goods” on them. Nixon had severe reservations about the CIA, accusing them of being an insular, elitist, East Coast secret society who thought they knew what was “good’ for America more than the President and the elected Government.
Trump’s team has hinted they might reduce the agencies’ briefing to a once-a-week event − something that will immediately cut their influence very dramatically. All the leaders who in the past have suffered from their briefings in the past − such as their assessment of Cheddi Jagan as a “fellow traveller” of Moscow during the Cold War, must be smiling.
Revenge, they say, is best served cold!
…on Government corruption
The PNC-led coalition Government sneaked into Office largely because they’d gotten all hot and sweaty about nailing the PPP’s hide to the wall on corruption. After 23 years in Office, most folks figured enough incumbents would’ve been softened up to “inducements” and succumbed. Hadn’t Jesus warned in his last speech at Gethsemane, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”? And last week, Government Minister Cathy Hughes, insisted “The APNU/AFC Government is committed to reducing corruption.”
But all that elicited was a collective shrug, and a rolling of eyes from the bemused populace that had become jaded to the point of bitter cynicism in just a year and a half. How extensive has been the corruption? Let your Eyewitness count the ways! Contracts for the boys? Nepotistic hiring? Bypassing the tender board? Jobs for the boys? Padded rentals? Licences for chicken!!? Billion-dollar stadiums?
Folks figure no government can practice corruption so quickly and so completely without years of planning and plotting!
If only they’d spared some time for “good governance”!!
…in insults
Asked to house Burnham’s papers next to Jagan’s in Red House, the latter’s faithful responded this “epiphany of surrealism” (imagine that!) would “contaminate” the doctor’s memory!!
Do fuh do, na obeah?
