Well, the day finally arrived – Indian-origin Rishi Sunak is now officially the Prime Minister of Britain, after being bestowed with that title by King Charles III! Your Eyewitness can’t decide whether the words “Prime Minister Sunak” or “King Charles III” will be more difficult to get used to!! After all, for his entire life he’s been calling that duffer “Prince Charles”!! But the person who represents Britain in the minds of most people across the globe – Winston Churchill – must be turning in his grave, muttering all sorts of imprecations on the new PM of Old Blighty!! Churchill detested Indians in general, and one Indian, Gandhi, in particular with a passion. His personal secretary reported that he “hated Indians”, and considered them “a beastly people with a beastly religion”. He saw the latter as a “malignant subversive fanatic” and “a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace.”
And here’s a fella of Indian refugee descent – via Africa, where his grandparents had gone as indentured labourers – now running Britain, the country that ruled India as a colony and shipped its people as commodities like rice and sugar to any country that asked!! Like to the French (Martinique and Guadeloupe), the Dutch (Suriname) and the Danes – (St Croix, etc). Well, the Empire has struck back for real with a son at the helm of the Imperial Power!! It’s like seeing Luke Skywalker succeed the Emperor Palpatine – also known by his Sith name Darth Sidious!!
But Sunak got into 10 Downing Street by the hair on his chinny chin chin!! Liz Truss had defeated him for the Tory leadership, to succeed Boris Johnson by members’ votes rather than the MPs and other leaders who preferred him. In a word, Truss had trumped Sunak only because she was white!! It took only 45 days – as the British economy imploded like that Death Star from Truss’s ministrations – for her to chuck it in!! With the Conservative leadership having to choose her successor, and all other contestants dropping out – including the shameless Boris – it was Sunak by default!! Your Eyewitness is willing to bet that if the choice were up to the Tory membership, it wouldn’t have been Sunak even if the Boris’s (white) Butler opposed him!!
Anyhow, your Eyewitness just saw Sunak’s first speech as Prime Minister – where he cut to the quick and said he basically gotta fix Liz Truss’s mistakes!! But in reality, it goes waaaaay beyond that, doesn’t it??
Can he get the 10% – who own 53% of Britain’s wealth – to stop making money from money, and rebuild the real economy, employing real people??
…for Guyanese
Your Eyewitness is sure that most Guyanese wish we could start all over in this conflicted country of ours. While a nation’s life is full of forks in the road of history, it’s just as certain that most think the 1955 fork, when the PPP split – occasioned by the US and made possible by the blind ambitions of Forbes Burnham – was the pivotal one!!
But is Burnham to take all the blame?? What about other leaders? And what about we, the people?? The bottom line is that by the time democratic elections rolled into our country, we still were looking at each other through the prism of the “six races” that made up our society. And as to who’d “take over” from the British, the coloured elite – which had occupied the rungs of status – were convinced they’d now inherit the power to lord it over others!
Our new beginning will be launched when we accept that any combo of Guyanese can run our country!!
…in Cricket
Phil Simmons, CWI coach, has resigned – à la Liz Truss – after the team’s ejection from the T-20 World Cup. Sadly – like in British politics – the problems go much deeper.
They need a root-and-branch makeover!!
