…and equal opportunity
Your Eyewitness is writing this on July 4…one day after the anniversary of the formation of Caricom and on the anniversary of the US “Declaration of Independence”. Most folks today can’t wrap their heads around the notion that the US was once a COLONY of Britain – just like us!! But that’s the fact, Jack!! And ever since, we’ve been bombarded with the message that the US represents the best and highest political aspirations and humanity as far as democratic governance is concerned.
In fact, the most well-known definition of democracy – rule by the people…for the people and of the people …is by a US president, Abe Lincoln. The “Statue of Liberty”, donated to the new Republic by France, which had just overthrown their monarchy, is the most well-known symbol of the promise of democracy. And of course, the innovation of a written constitution to delineate the powers of the arms of the Government that would oversee the State on behalf of the people – in whom sovereignty resided – became the standard for State formation ever since.
So, it was a bit of a bummer that just about this time, President Trump decided to abandon his predecessor, President Obama’s guidelines for colleges to use race as one of the factors in considering admissions. In other words, it was an enlargement of the civil-rights era guidelines on affirmative action for qualified minorities, to focus more on “race”. In effect, it further helped African Americans who previously had justified their preference through historic discriminatory practices. Trump has now disbanded this!
Looking at the welter of initiatives by the Trump Administration, it’s just another nail in the coffin of promises America once held out to the suffering “huddled masses” of the world, that is engraved on the Statue of Liberty. Sending home immigrants, separating illegal parents from their children and storing the latter in concrete holding pens; banning visitors from Muslim countries, etc, are only some of the measures that have made headlines.
But the move against affirmative action for African Americans in education – which has been shown to be the most important initiative for them to gain equality with white America – is a most cruel betrayal. Specifically of the promise that they’d be assisted to remove themselves from the early constitutional definition as being only worth “three-fifths” of whites. After setting African Americans against immigrants, the mask has been removed to show that once again, “if you’re black; stand back”!
… PNC office
Your Eyewitness will go over this once again – since it is clear some folks haven’t gotten the point he made about legitimacy for holding PNC office.
They’re confused about the PNC “party” and the PNC “regime”. When Granger, present leader of the PNC “party”, talks about fulfilling Burnham’s legacy, he’s talking about the PNC “regime” as established by the “founding leader”. This regime stood on three legs – the party, the armed forces, and the Civil Service and EACH were integral to Burnham’s rule.
After Hoyte succeeded Burnham, when the latter unexpectedly died in 1985, he cleansed the PNC party of practically all the Burnhamites. For all intents and purposes, the PNC after 1992 was just a shell. Even though Hoyte sidelined Brigadier Granger in favour of Major General Joe Singh, with the former back in the saddle, the Burnhamites in the army can rise again!!
…selling oil
Ahhh…what a tangled web the PNC Government weaves! The former presidential advisor on oil revealed that rogue commodity trader Glencore was proposed as the sole source to sell our oil!!
As if just 12.5% wasn’t a giveaway enough!!
