…on leadership
Yesterday, your Eyewitness offered some background to the AFC Biennial Meet where the assembled rank and file – and there were some real “rank” ones present!! – purported to elect “office bearers”. With the AFC effectively being “dead meat”, these worthies can also be called “pall bearers”!
Probably trying to show they were “grounding” with the rural masses, the conclave was moved to Vreed-en-Hoop – one mile west of Georgetown!! But if they really wanted to find out how “the other half lives”, they could’ve visited the squatting area of Plastic City – literally right next door to the school, where all the speechifying and voting took place. But did they? Not THIS lot. The press revealed the vehicles bringing the leaders and delegates stretched one mile in either direction. It was a sight to behold – especially to the pi55ed commuters of West Dem, who were slowed to a crawl at the Vreed-en-Hoop junction.
But why would the PM, VP and senior and junior Ministers want to get their SUV’s dirty? Let the lumpen element of Plastic City eat cake!! But oh yes… there was an election. Or was it “selection”. The standing indictment of these bourgeois political games is the rank and file are simply given the choice of voting for persons who’re already defined as “leadership material”. If one keeps rotating and shuffling the same pack of four cards – how the heck will there ever be new blood with new ideas at the head? Where, as we know, dead carcasses start stinking!
Anyhow, this being Guyana, even the choice between Tweedledee and Tweedldum turned on the question of race – in this “multi-racial party”. AFC’s one claim to fame was to accept there had to be a “rotation” between the African and Indian Guyanese in the top tier. But this, of course, further restricts the choice available to the hoi polloi! No Indigenous person need apply!!
With newbie Moses Nagamootoo dropping out, the “Leader’s tag” became a toss-up between Founding Leaders Raphael Trotman (as a “Mixed” he goes both ways!) and Khemraj Ramjattan. The vote was 127 to 125 in favour of Trotman and the congratulatory hug of Ramjattan left more space between them than the notoriously fake Hollywood “air kisses”!! No love lost there!!
There were mutters of who bussed in who, and who credentialised who. But the optics in the papers showed a clear, even racial breakdown – with Indigenous Peoples in the swing seat. As minorities are wont to do – they threw their support to the fella with more access to the real power holders!
Prezzie’s congratulatory call to Trotman re-sealed the Nassau Accord!! A homecoming?
…on judicial independence
Whatever one may say of Moses Nagamootoo (and this Eyewitness has said plenty!) he must be saluted for defending the Chancellor of the Judiciary against – as he put it – “scurrilous attacks in the Chronicle newspapers against the acting Chancellor of the Judiciary.”
As an attorney – and therefore an officer of the court – Nagamootoo was duty-bound to take this position. But we know to our cost, the seductiveness of pelf and power. Khemraj Ramjattan, a far more senior lawyer, sat next to Nagamootoo and was mute! What made Nagamootoo’s act more courageous was as PM, his powers have been severely whittled away – yet was now conceding his last bastion of “Information” was slipping away.
For the editor of the Chronic to carry the attack, he had to know Nagamootoo didn’t count anymore in the scheme of things?! Another question was what made Nagamootoo come out now?
The staunch condemnation from his old bete noir from his PPP days, Ramkarran, about the “Chronicle’s calumny” had to have done the trick.
Can’t have the bourgeoisie seize the high ground!!
…on humiliations
The problem with bullies, they don’t know when to stop. How can these people clamp Ramotar’s car? The man was PRESIDENT OF GUYANA!
The entire edifice is being eaten away by these termites!
