Is oil important, or what?? Here it is, your Eyewitness didn’t even know Guyana was in the running for a seat on the UN Security Council and – braddaps!! – it’s announced that we are!! So, either our diplomatic representatives were working overtime – but in stealth mode – or, more likely, we’re now recognized as one of the world players that count. Back in the day, when Burnham was busy as a beaver, building bridges with the Third World so’s to be seen as a big fish in that overcrowded, poverty-stricken pond, we became members of the Security Council twice – first in 1975-1976, and then again in 1982-1983.
So, what’s with the Security Council?? Just that it’s the part of the UN system where the real power lies. It now has reps from 15 countries, and the remaining 180 or so countries in the General Assembly can jump up and down on whatever they want –it’s the Security Council that can nix their decision at any time. That’s power!!
So, how’d it come about?? Well, as WWII was winding down, the victorious powers saw they wouldn’t be able to hold back the demand for greater inclusivity in world affairs, after the failure of the League of Nations to prevent the war. So, the US, UK and Russia met, and – after the US proposed China (actually, Taiwan) and the UK proposed France as a counterforce to Germany — a five-member Security Council was formed, with any one of the five being able to veto General Assembly decisions!! That’s eating your cake and having it too!! After two decades of criticisms by the newly formed states, in 1965, the Security Council was expanded to 15 Member States. Ten additional members are elected for two years by the General Assembly, in accordance with geographical distribution. Each regional group has an assigned number of seats: for the African Group; 2 for the Asia-Pacific Group; 2 for the Latin American and Caribbean Group; 1 for the Eastern European Group; 2 for the Western European and Others Group. Half of the elected member seats are renewed annually.
So, this year, we’re really replacing Brazil – which was the member from the LAC!! But since LAC has 33 members states, it wasn’t a walkover to be the Security Council’s new rep. So, with the five permanent members retaining their vetoes, what do the other ten do? They vote on issues that come before the UNSC, that’s what – which can force a veto on occasions. With a war going on in Ukraine and the world divided on how to end it, our vote in the Security Council’s gonna be quite important.
Then we’ll be there when the World Court rules on Venezuela’s controversy!!
…on down
Some folks are born troublemakers – they just can’t help themselves!! Hamilton Green’s one of them. After committing more than his fair share of trouble on the ground from the sixties to the nineties, he’s now turned to hurling provocative missives with all sorts of concocted incendiary assertions. He recently challenged Minister Walrond to “say who encouraged the use of the Hindu phrase ‘Apan Jaat” — which in our circumstances means vote for your own race, so that in the 1957 Elections, a popular figure on the East Coast lost his seat to Balram Singh Rai for no other reason than racial voting, of which the PPP, based on a demography, were the beneficiaries.”
He thus slyly implies the PPP introduced the phrase “Apan Jaat” into Guyanese politics. Yet the ”popular figure” he mentions – Eusi Kwayana – has repeatedly clarified that it was Debideen who did so!!But more germanely, it was Burnham, after he split the PPP in 1955, who started the actual practice of racially “voting for our own”!!
Gwan da side, Hammy!
…to absurdity
After asserting the PPP’s an Indian “Apan Jaat” party, Green claimed “as a corollary, there was the other destructive phrase of “awe pun top.” But wouldn’t Indian Guyanese have said, “Abee pan tap”??
Yuh lie, Hammie!!
